THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR 



BY E. F. BENSON 



THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR 

THE TORTOISE 

MICHAEL 

THE OAKLEYITES 

DAVID BLAIZE 

ARUNDEL 

GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 

NEW YORK 



THE FREAKS OF 

MAYFAIR 

BY E. F. BENSON 

AUTHOR OF '^THE TORTOISE," 
"MICHAEL," "DODO," dc. 
ILLUSTRATED BY 

GEORGE PLANK 




NEW YORK 
GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 



n^^ 



7 



PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 



DEDICATED 

TO 

FRANK EYES 

AND 

KINDLY EARS 



THE LIST OF CONTENTS 



I. THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

II. AUNT GEORGIE .... 

III. QUACK-QUACK .... 

IV. THE POISON OF ASPS 

V. THE SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE 

VI. THE ETERNALLY UNCOMPROMISED 

VII. THE GRIZZLY KITTENS . 

VIII. CLIMBERS: 

I. THE HORIZONTAL . 

IX. CLIMBERS : 

II. THE PERPENDICULAR 

X. THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR . 

XI. 'SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

XII. THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME . 



page 13 
. 31 



49 
71 

85 
107 
125 

143 

161 

183 
199 

217 



THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 

reproduced from drawings by 
George Plank 

1. THE COMPLEAT SNOBS ., . Frontispiece 

2. AUNT GEORGIE .... page 36 

3. QUACK-QUACK .j . . . . 52 

4. POISON OF ASPS 70 

5. THE SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE . . 98 

6. THE GRIZZLY KITTENS .... 132 

7. CLIMBERS: I. THE HORIZONTAL . . I48 

8. CLIMBERS: II. THE PERPENDICULAR . 164 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 
CHAPTER ONE 



CHAPTER ONE 
THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

THERE IS NO MORE JOYOUS COUPLE 
in all Mayfair than Sir Louis Marigold, Bart., 
M.P., and Lady Mary Marigold, and whether 
they are at Marigold Park, Bucks, or at 
Homburg, or in their spacious residence in 
Berkeley Square, their lives form one unbroken 
round of pomp and successful achievement. She 
was the daughter of an obscure Irish Earl, and 
when she married her husband was still hard 
at work building up the business of Marigold 
& Sons. Those were strenuous days, and the 
profession of money-getting made it necessary 
for him to indulge his snobbishness only as a 
hobby. But she, like the good wife she has al- 
ways been to him, took care of his hobby, as of 
a stamp-collection, and constantly enriched it with 
specimens of her own acquisition, being a snob of 
purest ray serene herself. She is the undoubted 
descendant of Arrahmedear, king of Donegal, in 
which salubrious county her brother, the present 
Earl, is steadily drinking himself to death in the 
intervals of farming his fifty-acre estate. When 
he has succeeded in completely poisoning him- 
self with whisky, she will become Countess of 
Ballamuck herself, since the title descends, in 

13 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

default of male heirs, in the female line, and there 
will be what I hope it is not irreverent to call 
high old times in Berkeley Square and Marigold 
Park. 

When first they married her husband always 
playfully called her ' The Princess ' (being the 
hneal descendant of that remarkable monarch 
King Arrahmedear), and what began in play 
soon sobered into a habit. But when she is a 
real contemporary peeress, it is probable that he 
will drop the appellation derived from legendary 
kings, and call her Countess. There will be no 
hint of badinage about that: Countess she will 
be, and the papers will be full of little para- 
graphs about the movements of Sir Louis Mari- 
gold, Bart, M.P., and the Countess of Balla- 
muck. . . . There is just the faintest suggestion 
of Ouida-ism and impropriety which gives such 
announcements a peculiar relish. 

Now there is no snob so profound as the 
well-born snob, especially in the female line. She 
(in this case Lady Mary Marigold) knows about 
it from the inside, and is aware of all it means 
to be the daughter of earls, not to mention kings. 
Her husband therefore, having been born of an 
obscure commercial family, was not originally so 
gifted as his wife, but by industry and study 

H 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

he has now practically caught her up, and they 
run together in an amicable rose-coloured dead- 
heat. Like all the finer endowments, as that of 
poetry, pure snobbishness is born not acquired, 
and lowly as was his birth, the fairy-godmother 
who visited his infant cradle brought this golden 
gift with her, and with the same instinct for what 
is worth having that has always distinguished 
him, he did not squander or dissipate her bounty, 
but hoarded and polished and perfected it. 
When he was quite a little boy he used to dream 
about marquises, and, if a feverish cold added 
a touch of daring to his slumbers, about kings 
and queens; now with t;he reward that waits 
upon childhood's aspirations, it has all come true. 
Already his son (the first-born of the future 
countess) has married the Lady Something 
Something, daughter of a marquis, and there are 
great hopes about a widowed Bishop for his 
daughter. 

It might seem that this episcopal anchorage 
was but a poor fulfilment of the prayers of her 
papa, but any who think that can form no ade- 
quate impression of the completeness of Sir 
Louis's snobbishness. For the real snob is he 
who worships success and distinction whether 
that success is hall-marked with coronets, wealth, 

15 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

or gaiters. To achieve success in the eyes of the 
world is to him the greatest of human accom- 
plishments, and to be acquainted, or better still, 
connected with those who have done so, and 
best of all to be identified with them, constitutes 
the joy of life. Sir Louis has a profound ad- 
miration for his wife, his son, his son's wife, but 
he perhaps reserves his levels of highest com- 
placency for himself, and with all his busy loving 
glances at the dazzling objects round him, he 
never really diverts his gaze from his own career. 
It is for his own success in life that he reserves 
his most sincere respect. 

While his wife and he are thus in every sense 
perfect snobs, as far as perfection can be at- 
tained in this tentative world, they, like all other 
professors in great branches of knowledge, spe- 
cialize in one particular department, and theirs 
is Birth. It is, of course, a great joy to Lady 
Mary Marigold to see the wife of a Cabinet 
Minister, of an African explorer, of an ambas- 
sador pass out of her dining-room at the con- 
clusion of dinner, while she stands by the door 
and, shaking an admonitory finger at her hus- 
band till her bracelets rattle, says, ' Now, Sir 
Baronet, don't be too long ' ; it is a joy also to 
him to move to the other end of the table 

i6 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

between the ambassador and the Cabinet Minister 
and say, ' My lady won't grudge your Excellency 
time to drink another glass of port and have a 
small cigar ' ; but most of all they love the hour 
when these manoeuvres are enacted with mem- 
bers of the aristocracy, or, as has happened sev- 
eral times in this last year or two (for they are 
really among the tree-tops), with those for whom, 
to the exclusion of themselves and other guests, 
finger-bowls are provided. On these occasions, 
that is when Royalty is present, a sort of seizure 
is liable to come upon them, and for a minute or 
two one or other sinks back in his chair in a 
dazed condition consequent upon so much happi- 
ness. A foretaste of the bliss of Nirvana is 
theirs, and Sir Louis's eyes have been known to 
fill with happy, happy tears on seeing a Prince 
show my lady how to eat a cherry backwards, 
stalk first. 

In the early days of their marriage, when, as 
Mr. Marigold, he came back tired with his day's 
work to his modest dwelling In Oakley Street, 
Birth was his hobby, and instead of relaxing his 
tired brain over the perusal of trashy novels or 
the playing of fruitless games of patience, like so 
many who have no sense of the value of time, he 
and she would sit tranquilly, one on each side of 

17 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

the fireplace, with a reading-lamp conveniently 
placed between them, and dive into the sunlit 
waters of the Peerage. One happy Christmas 
Day they found that the present of each to the 
other was a copy of this beautiful book, and 
after this delicious coincidence, they kept the 
pleasant custom up, and always presented each 
other with Peerages at Christmas, so that now 
they have both of them a complete set for the 
last twenty-three years. Their son, Oswald Owen 
Vivian Lancelot, was true to parental tradition 
and tendency, and rapturous was the day when, 
at the age of fourteen, after hours of careful 
work, he gave his mother on her birthday the 
gift he had been secretly preparing for her, 
namely the roll of his own ancestry, neatly il- 
luminated. It was somewhat lop-sided, for very 
few Marigolds had been discoverable, but away, 
away back went the other line of the descent 
through Earls and coronets innumerable till it 
reached the original and unique King Arrahme- 
dear of Donegal, above whose glorious name he 
had illuminated a royal crown. It was entirely 
Oswald Owen Vivian Lancelot's own idea, and 
when he became engaged to the daughter of 
a marquis, his mother felt that she had known it 
would happen for years. 

i8 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

Owing probably to the large number of Jews 
and journalists and brewers and pawnbrokers 
who have been ennobled during the long Liberal 
tenure of office, this particular brand of snob- 
bishness has rather fallen into neglect, and many 
of the brightest snobs of Mayfair consider the 
cult of the mere peerage a somewhat Victorian 
pursuit. But the more earnest practitioners, like 
Lady Mary and Sir Louis Marigold, remain un- 
affected by such shallowness. They argue that 
the conferring of a peerage is still a symbol of 
success, and, loyalist to the core, consider that 
those who are good enough for the King are 
good enough for them. Besides, they have 
found by experience that they actually do feel 
greater raptures in the presence of Royalty than 
in that of subjects of the realm, and among sub- 
jects of the realm they like dukes better than 
marquises, marquises than earls, earls than vis- 
counts. It is not implied that the pleasurable- 
ness of their internal sensations would indicate 
to them the rank of a total stranger whose name 
they were ignorant of, but knowing his name and 
his rank, they find that their delight in converse 
with him Increases according to his precedence. 
Many pleasures are wholly matters of the im- 
agination, and this may be one, but the hal- 

19 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

lucination is in this case, as in that of other 
nervous disorders, quite complete. And when 
a year or two ago Lady Mary was dangerously 
ill with appendicitis, her husband sensibly as- 
suaged the deep and genuine anxiety he felt for 
her, by going through, day after day, the cards 
of the eminent people who had called to make 
enquiries. A prince (a very eminent one) was 
so condescending as to call twice, once on a Mon- 
day and once on the following Thursday. To 
this day Sir Louis cannot but believe that the 
better news the doctor gave him about my lady 
on that happy afternoon, was somehow connected 
with the magic of the repeated visit. 

It has been mentioned that Sir Louis is in 
the habit of calling his wife 'Princess'; it has 
also been hinted that she alludes to him as ' Sir 
Baronet.' There is a touch of badinage, of play- 
fulness in both these titles, but below the play- 
fulness is a substratum of seriousness. For she 
is descended from kings so ancient that nobody 
knows anything about them, and he is a real 
Baronet, and since his title in ordinary use is 
that of a mere knight, she and others of their in- 
timates are accustomed to call him Sir Baronet, 
in order to mark the difference between him and 
such people as provincial mayors or eminent 

20 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

actors and musicians. It must be supposed, too, 
that he is far from discouraging this, since he has 
printed on his cards, ' Sir Louis Marigold, Bart, 
M.P.,' in full. It may be unusual, but then there 
are, unfortunately, not many Baronets who take 
a proper pride in the honours with which their 
Sovereign has decorated them or their ancestors. 
Marquises and earls put the degree of their 
nobility on their cards instead of just calling 
themselves ' Lord,' and surely a Baronet cannot 
go wrong in following so august an example. 
But there is another custom of his to which per- 
haps exception may be taken, for it is his habit 
when entertaining a luncheon-party at which 
mere commoners are present (this is not a fre- 
quent occurrence) to step jauntily along in his 
proper precedence to the dining-room, leaving the 
less exalted persons to follow. He does it in a 
careless, unconscious manner, and this manner 
is by no means put on : he walks in front of low- 
lier commoners instinctively: he does not think 
about it: his legs just take him. It is perhaps 
scarcely necessary to add that instinct is not so 
strong with him as to go in before any lady, even 
if she were his own washerwoman, for the ob- 
ligations of chivalry outweigh with him even 
those of nobility. It has always been so with the 

21 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

true aristocrat, and it is so with him. Perhaps 
if a Suffragette were present he might go on 
ahead, for he considers that all women who hold 
any views but his on that subject have unsexed 
themselves. In his more indulgent moments he 
alludes to them as ' deluded wretches.' 

His politics are of course Tory. A Tory Prime 
Minister honoured himself by recommending 
the King to honour Sir Louis, and much time and 
a good deal of money spent in the Tory cause 
make it quite likely that a further honour will 
some time he conferred upon him when (and if) 
his party ever gets back into power. It is sig- 
nificant, anyhow, that he has made several visits 
lately to the Heralds' College, where the shape 
of Viscounts' coronets seemed to interest him a 
good deal, for since the motto of his business 
life, which has proved so successful, was * Pre- 
pare well in advance,' it is likely that it will 
apply in such matters as these as well, and it may 
safely be assumed that on that happy day his 
spoons and forks will be found to be already 
engraved with the honour conferred on him. To 
be sure, should this happen before Lady Mary's 
brother finally succumbs to the insidious bottle, 
she will find herself a step lower than her previ- 
ous rank had been, by becoming a Viscountess 

22 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

instead of remaining an Earl's daughter. But, 
on the other hand, this will be but a temporary 
eclipse, for it cannot be so very long before she 
comes from under her cloud again on the demise 
of the dipsomaniac, and shines forth as an inde- 
pendent Countess. The whole affair, moreover, 
has been talked out so constantly by them that 
they are sure to have come to a wise decision 
based on the true principles of snobbishness. 

Snobbishness is no superficial thing with 
them, or indeed with anybody; it springs from 
fountains as deep as those of character or reli- 
gion. Now that between them they have got 
the Peerage practically by heart, its study, though 
they often read over favourite passages together, 
no longer takes them much time or conscious 
thought, it merely permeates them like Chris- 
tianity or the moral qualities. It tinges all they 
do, and they do a great many very kind and con- 
siderate and generous things. Sir Baronet is 
the most liberal giver; no appeal made for 
a deserving and charitable object ever came to 
him in vain, but deep in his heart all the time that 
he is signing his munificent cheque, the thankful 
cries of the poor folk he has succoured sound in 
his ears, as they murmur, ' Thank you. Sir 
Baronet!' * Bless you. Sir Baronet!' Lady 

23 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

Mary is equally open-handed, especially when 
children and dumb animals are concerned, and 
she declares she can almost hear the thumping of 
the dogs' tails as they strive to say, ' Thank you, 
my lady! ' ' Bless your ladyship's kind heart.' 

Occasionally, out of mere exuberance, Sir 
Baronet sounds an insincere note. He wrote 
once to Oswald bidding him bring his wife to 
dinner in these terms: 'Bring my lady along to 
dinner on Tuesday week, my boy. No party, just 
ourselves, and I think the Princess told me the 
French Ambassador and the Duchess of Mid- 
dlesex were to take their cutlets with us.' . . . 
But all the time his pen was so trembling with 
gratification that for the moment Oswald thought 
his father must have a fit of shivering, till the 
truer explanation dawned on him, and he realized 
that the usually neat and careful handwriting was 
blurred with joy. But perhaps this little insin- 
cerity is but the mark of the most complete 
snob of all, who affects to make light of the 
attainments towards which his holiest and high- 
est aspirations have been ever directed. Any- 
how, one would be sorry to think that Sir Baronet 
was sincere over this, for it would imply that he 
was getting used to Ambassadors and Dukes, 
that he was becoming blase with a surfeit of aris- 

24 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

tocracy. That would be too tragic a fate for so 
thoroughly amiable an ass. 

There is nothing more stimulating in this drab 
world than to look at those who intensely enjoy 
the prosperity which surrounds them, and to see 
Sir Baronet stepping along Piccadilly with his 
springy walk, and his ruddy face ready to be 
wreathed in smiles as he takes off his hat to some 
social star, is sufficient to reconcile the cynic 
and the disappointed, if they have any touch of 
humanity left in them, to a world where some 
people have such a wonderfully pleasant time. 
Perhaps if cynics were a little simpler, a little 
more alive to the possible joys of existence, they 
would share some of those raptures themselves. 
A princely fortune is no necessity to the snob: 
it is possible to taste his joys on a modest com- 
petence. But character and thoroughness are 
needful: he must read his Peerage till the glam- 
our grows about the pages, and must value aright 
the little paragraphs in newspapers which record 
the doings of the mighty. Unless men are born 
with this gift, it is true they will not enter the 
highest circle of the Paradiso, but they should 
at least be able to leave the Inferno far below 
them. And as a matter of fact, most people have 
a touch (just a touch) of the snob innate in them, 

25 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

If they will only take the pains to look for it. 
They may not have the peerage-mind, but prob- 
ably there is some sort of worldly success before 
which they are willing to truckle. It is worth a 
httle trouble, in view of the spiritual reward, 
for the snob always has an aim in life: he never 
drifts along a purposeless existence. 

The chronicler is tempted to linger a little 
over these happy and prosperous persons, and 
forecast the further glories that inevitably await 
them. At present a certain number of the Vera 
de Veres turn up their patrician noses when Mari- 
golds are mentioned, which is exceedingly foolish 
of them, considering that it is out of Marigolds 
that the very best Vere de Veres have been made. 
The Marigolds will win eminence and renown 
by their industry, their riches, and their colossal 
respectability. That was how the Vere de Veres 
became the cream of the country, and instead of 
calling the Marigolds ' those tradesmen,' they 
would be wiser to hail them as cousins who will 
buttress up some of their own tottering lines (if 
their sons and daughters can only manage to 
marry into the Marigolds) by reinforcing them 
with their own vigorous blood, their wealth, and 
not least, their respectability. In the next gen- 
eration Oswald Owen Vivian Lancelot will be 

26 



THE COMPLEAT SNOBS 

Earl of Ballamuck and Viscount Marigold, and 
his children, of whom he has only eleven at 
present, will be Members of Parliament, and 
hard-working soldiers and diplomatists, with 
peeresses for sisters. When a few more years 
have rolled, the Vere de Veres will have to re- 
spect them, for they will be Vere de Veres, good, 
strong, honest Vere de Veres, the pick of the 
bunch, for with their healthy bodies, active 
brains, and, above all, their untarnished respec- 
tability, they are precisely the folk on whom 
honours pour down in spate. And what is the 
use of affecting to despise a family that in a hun- 
dred years will number bishops and ambassadors 
and generals among its collaterals, and will cer- 
tainly have a family banner in St. George's 
chapel ? 



AUNT GEORGIE 
CHAPTER TWO 



CHAPTER TWO 
AUNT GEORGIE 

AUNT GEORGIE'S CHRISTIAN NAME 
as bestowed by godparents with silver mugs at 
baptism was not Georgiana but simply George. 
He was in fact an infant of the male sex accord- 
ing to physical equipment, but it became per- 
fectly obvious even when he was quite a little 
boy that he was quite a little girl. He played 
with dolls rather than lead soldiers, and cried 
when he was promoted to knickerbockers. These 
peculiarities, sad in one so young, caused his par- 
ents to send him to a boys' school at the early 
age of nine, where they hoped he might learn 
to take a truer view of himself. But this wider 
experience of life seemed but to confirm him in 
his delusions, for when he quarrelled with other 
young gentlemen, he did not hit them in the face 
with his fist, but slapped them with the open hand 
and pulled their hair. It was observed also that 
when he ran (which he did not like doing) he 
ran from the knees instead of striding from the 
hips. He did little, however, either in the way 
of running or of quarrelling, for he was of a 
sedentary and sentimental disposition, and 
formed a violent attachment to another young 
lady, on whom Nature had bestowed the frame 

31 



AUNT GEORGIE 

of a male, and they gave each other pieces of 
their hair, which were duly returned to their real 
owners when they had tiffs, with inexorable notes 
similar to those by which people break off engage- 
ments. These estrangements were followed by 
rather oily reconciliations, in which they vowed 
eternal friendship again, treated each other to 
chocolates and more hair, and would probably 
have kissed each other if they had dared. Their 
unnatural sentiments were complicated by a 
streak of odious piety, and they were happiest 
when, encased in short surplices, they sang treble 
together in the school choir out of one hymn- 
book. 

Public-school life checked the outward mani- 
festation of girlhood, but Georgle's essential 
nature continued to develop in secret. Publicly 
he became more or less a male boy, but this was 
not because he was really growing into a male 
boy, but because through ridicule, contempt, and 
example he found it more convenient to behave 
like one. He did not like boys' games, but being 
tall and strong and well-made, and being forced 
to take part in them, he played them with con- 
siderable success. But he hated roughness and 
cold weather and mud, and his infant piety de- 
veloped Into a sort of sentimental rapture with 

32 



AUNT GEORGIE 

Stained-glass windows and ecclesiastical rites and 
church music. His public school was one where 
Confession to the Chaplain was, though not in- 
sisted on, encouraged, and Georgie conceived a 
sort of passion for this athletic young priest, 
and poured out to him week by week a farrago 
of pale and bloodless peccadilloes, and thought 
how wonderful he was. Eventually the embar- 
rassed clergyman, who was of an ingenious turn 
of mind, but despaired of ever teaching Georgie 
manliness, invented a perfectly new penance for 
him, and forbade him to come to confession, un- 
less he had really something desperate to say, 
more frequently than once every three weeks. 
Otherwise, apart from those religious flirtations, 
Georgie appeared to be growing up in an ordi- 
nary human manner. But, if anyone had been 
skilful enough to dissect him down to the marrow 
of his soul, he would have found that Georgie 
was not passing from boyhood into manhood, 
but from girlhood into womanhood. 

He went up to Oxford, and there, under the 
sentimental influence of the city of spires, the 
last trace of his manhood left him. His father, 
who, by one of Nature's inimitable conjuring 
tricks, was a bluff old squire, rather too fond of 
port now, just as he had been rather too fond of 

33 



AUNT GEORGIE 

the first line of the Gaiety Chorus in his youth, 
longed for Georgie to sow some wild oats, to 
get drunk or gated, to get entangled with a girl, 
to do anything to show that virility, though sadly 
latent, existed in him. But Georgie continued 
to disappoint those unedifying wishes: he pre- 
ferred barley-water to port, and was always 
working in his room by ten in the evening, so 
that he would not have known whether he was 
gated or not, and he took no interest in any 
choruses apart from chapel choirs, and never got 
entangled with anybody. Instead he became a 
Roman Catholic, and a mixture of port, passion, 
and apoplexy carried off his father before he 
had time to alter his will. 

Georgie stepped into his father's shoes, and 
continued his own blameless career. He had 
an income of some three thousand a year, and 
a small place in Sussex, and at the conclusion of 
his Oxford days, turned over the place in Sussex 
to his step-mother and his three plain sisters, 
reserving there a couple of rooms for himself, 
and took a small neat house in Curzon Street. 
He was both generous and careful about money, 
made his sisters ample allowances, and pro- 
ceeded to spend the rest of his income thought- 
fully and methodically. He had an excellent 

34 



AUNT GEORGIE 

taste in furniture and decorations, though an 
essentially feminine one, and the house in Cur- 
zon Street became a comfortable and charming 
little nest, with Chippendale furniture in the 
drawing-room and bottles of pink bath-salts with 
glass spoons in the bath-room. He had a pri- 
vate den of his own (though anything less like 
a den was never seen), with a looking-glass over 
the fire-place into which he stuck invitation-cards, 
a Chesterfield sofa, on the arm of which there 
often reposed a piece of embroidery, a writing- 
table with all sorts of dainty contrivances, such 
as a smelling-bottle, and a little piece of soft 
sponge in a dish, over the damp surface of which 
he drew postage-stamps instead of licking them 
with his tongue, and by degrees he got together 
a collection of carved jade, which was displayed 
in a vitrine (vulgarly, a glass case) lined with 
velvet and lit inside by electric light. He had a 
brougham motor-car, driven by a handsome 
young chauffeur, whom, if he took the wrong 
turning, he called a ' naughty boy ' through the 
tube, and was personally attended by a very 
smart young parlour-maid, for though he did not 
care for girls in any proper manly way, he liked, 
when he was sleepy in the morning, to hear the 
rustle of skirts. His cook, whom he saw every 



AUNT GEORGIE 

day after breakfast in his den, was an artiste, and 
he had a good cellar of light wines. After lunch 
and dinner he always made coffee himself, in 
Turkish fashion, for his guests, and passed round 
with it odd, syrupy liqueurs. His bedroom was 
merely a woman's bedroom, with a blue quilt on 
the bed, a long cheval-glass on the floor, silver- 
backed brushes on the toilet-table and no razors, 
for a neighbouring barber came to shave him 
every morning. In cold weather, when his 
mauve silk pyjamas were hung out to warm in 
front of the fire, the parlour-maid inserted into 
his bed a hot-water bottle, jacketed in the same 
tone of blue as his quilt. On that Georgie put 
his soft pink feet, and always went to sleep im- 
mediately. 

Here he lived a kind and blameless life, but 
the life of a sprightly widow of forty, who is rich 
and childless, and does not intend to marry again. 
In the morning, after seeing his cook, he wrote 
a few letters (he did not use the telephone much 
because it tickled his ear, and he disliked talking 
into a little box where other people had talked 
and breathed) and these he generally sealed with 
a signet belonging to his step-mother's grand- 
mother, which had a coronet on it. He was a 
little snobbish in this regard, in a Victorian old- 

36 




Q**n^ "^pOSSj^ 



AUNT GEORGIE 

fashioned way, for though his step-mother was 
no sort of relation to him he took over her re- 
lations as cousins, and hunted up the most remote 
connections of hers, for adoption, in the Peerage. 
His letters being finished he took his soft hat and 
sat at his club for half an hour reading the papers. 
Generally he walked out to lunch, and was called 
for by his car about a quarter to three. Some- 
times he had a little shopping to do, and if not, 
went for a drive, sitting very upright, much on 
the look-out for acquaintances, and returned 
home for tea. After tea he sat on his sofa work- 
ing at his embroidery, had a hot bath, and except 
when, about twice a week, he had a few people 
to dine with him, went out to dinner. He did 
not play bridge but patience and the piano, both 
of which he manipulated with a good deal of 
skill. When he entertained at his own house, his 
guests were chiefly young men with rather waggly 
walks and little jerky movements of their hands, 
and old ladies with whom he was always a 
great success, for he understood them so well. 
He called them all, young men and old ladies 
alike, * my dear,* and they had great gossips to- 
gether, and they often said Georgie was very 
wicked, which was a lie. 

He had considerable musical taste, as well as 

37 



AUNT GEORGIE 

proficiency on the piano, and very soon his life 
became a busy one in the sense, at any rate, that 
he had very little time for his embroidery. He 
built out a big room at the back of his house, 
and gave tinkling little modern musical parties, 
at which he introduced masses of young geniuses 
to the notice of his friends. Also he took to 
practising his piano with some seriousness, and 
would often forgo his walk to the club and his 
perusal of the morning papers in order to work 
at his music, and sat at his instrument for two 
hours together, with his rings and his handker- 
chief on the candle-brackets. His taste was 
modern, and he liked the kind of piece about 
which you are not sure if it is over or not, or 
what has happened. He paid quantities of 
country-house visits to the homes of his old-lady 
friends and his step-mother's cousins, where he 
would sit in the library reading and writing his 
letters till half-past twelve, and take a little 
stroll with a brown cape on his arm till lunch- 
time. He sketched too, and produced rather 
messy water-colours of churches and beech-trees, 
and made crayon-portraits of his hostess or her 
boys, which he always sent her with his letter 
of thanks for a most pleasant visit, neatly framed. 
His portraits of elderly ladies had a certain re- 

38 



AUNT GEORGIE 

semblance to each other, being based on a formula 
of a lace cap, a row of pearls, and a thoughtful 
expression. He had a similar formula for young 
men, of which the chief ingredients were a 
cricket-shirt and no coat or Adam's apple, long 
eyelashes, and a girlish mouth. He was not good 
at eyes, so his sitters were always looking down. 
After lunch at these most pleasant visits he went 
out for a drive in a motor to see some neighbour- 
ing point of interest or to call on some adopted 
cousin whom he had discovered to live somewhere 
about. He rested in his own room after these 
fatigues and excitements for an hour before 
dinner, with his feet up and a dressing-gown on, 
and afterwards would work on a crayon-sketch, 
play the piano, or make himself agreeable to 
anybody who was in need of gentle conversation. 
Often he would settle down thus in a friend's 
house for a fortnight at a time, in which case 
he brought his embroidery and his car with him, 
and was most useful in taking other guests out 
for drives, or bringing home members of a 
shooting-party. Occasionally, for no reason, he 
roused violent antagonism in the breasts of rude 
brainless men, and after he had left the smoking- 
room in the evening, one would sometimes say 
to another, ' Good God! What is it? ' 

39 



AUNT GEORGIE 

Georgie lived in this whirl of pleasant pur- 
suits for some ten years. The only disagreeable 
incident that occurred during this time was that 
his attractive chauffeur married his attractive 
parlour-maid, and for a little, surrounded by 
hateful substitutes, he was quite miserable. But 
he wooed the selfish pair back again by taking 
a garage with a flat above it, where they could 
keep house, raising Bowles's wages, and getting 
in another parlour-maid when the curse of Eve 
was on Mrs. Bowles, and when he was now about 
thirty-five, Georgie definitely developed auntish- 
ness. As seen above, there were already many 
symptoms of it, but now the disease laid firm 
and incurable hold on him. 

His auntishness was of the proverbial maiden- 
aunt variety, and was touched with a certain acid 
and cattish quality that now began to tinge his 
hitherto good-natured gossipy ways. As usually 
happens, he tended to detect in his friends and 
acquaintances the defects which he laboured 
under himself, and found that Cousin Betty was 
getting so ill-natured, and Cousin John had 
spoken most sarcastically and unkindly to him. 
His habits became engrained, and when he went 
out to dinner, as he continued to do, he took 
with him a pair of goloshes in a brown paper 

40 



AUNT GEORGIE 

parcel, if he meant to walk home, in case the 
crossings might be muddy. He was faithful 
enough to his old friends, the waggly-walking 
young men of his youth, and such of his old 
ladies who survived, and still went out with them 
on sketching-parties when they stayed together 
in the country, but otherwise he sought new 
friends among young men and young women, 
to whom he behaved in a rather disconcerting 
manner, sometimes, especially on sunny morn- 
ings, treating them like contemporaries, and 
wishing to enter into their ' fun,' sometimes pet- 
ting them, as if they were children, and some- 
times, as if they were naughty children, getting 
cross with them. He wanted in fact to be a girl 
still, and yet receive the deference due to a 
middle-aged woman, which is the clou to maiden- 
auntishness. He had little fits of belated and 
senile naughtiness, and would take a young man 
to the Gaiety, and encourage him to point out 
which of the girls seemed to him most attrac- 
tive, and then scold him for his selfishness If 
he did not appear eager to come back home 
with him, and sit for an hour over the fire until 
Georgie felt inclined to go to bed. Or, having 
become a sort of recognised chaperone in Lon- 
don, he would take a girl-cousin (step-mother's 

41 



AUNT GEORGIE 

side) to a ball, and be vexed with her because 
she had not had enough dancing by one oVlock. 
It must not be supposed that it was his habit to 
appear in so odious a light, but it sometimes 
happened. To do him justice, he was repentant 
for his ill-humour next day, and would arrange 
a little treat for a boy and a girl together, driving 
them down in his car to the Mid-Surrey golf- 
club, where they had a game, while he sat and 
sketched the blue-bells in Kew Gardens. 

By this time his step-mother was dead 
(Georgie did a lovely crayon of her after death), 
and two out of his three plain sisters had mar- 
ried. The other used often to stay with him in 
London, and often he would bring quite a large 
party of young people down to the house in 
Sussex, where they had great romps. Georgie 
was quite at his best when entertaining in his 
own house, and he liked nothing better every 
now and then than a pillow-fight in the passage, 
when, emitting shrill screams of dismay and 
rapture, and clad in a discreet dressing-gown 
over his mauve silk pyjamas, he laughed himself 
speechless at the * fun,' and bore the breakage 
of the glass of his water-colour pictures with the 
utmost good-humour. But when he had had 
enough himself, he expected that everybody else 

42 



AUNT GEORGIE 

should have had enough too, therein disclosing 
the fell features of Aunt Georgie. 

Georgle did not, as the greyer seas of the forties 
and fifties began to engulf him, fall into the er- 
rors of grizzly kittens, but took quite kindly to 
spectacles when he wanted to read the paper or 
write his letters, and made no secret of his annual 
visit to Harrogate, to purge himself of the gouty 
tendencies which he had inherited from his father. 
He did not, of course, announce the fact that 
he had had a fresh supply of teeth, or that he 
had instructed his dentist to give a studied ir- 
reguUrity to them, and it is possible that he used 
a little hair-dye on his moustache which he clipped 
in the new fashion, leaving only two small tufts 
of hair like tails below his nostrils, but he quite 
dropped pillow-fights, though keeping up his 
music and his embroidery, and more than keeping 
up the increasing ill-nature of his tittle-tattle. He 
made great pets of his chauffeur's children, who 
in their artless way sometimes called him 
* Daddy ' or * Grandpa.' He did not quite like 
either of these appellations, and their mother was 
instructed to impress on their infant minds that 
he was ' Mister Uncle Georgie.' But * Miss 
Auntie Georgie ' would have been far more ap- 
propriate. 

43 



AUNT GEORGIE 

It IS perhaps needless to add that he has never 
married and never will. Soon the second set of 
girl-friends whom he chose when he first devel- 
oped auntlshness will be middle-aged women, and 
as, since then, he has made quantities of new 
young friends, his table will never be destitute of 
slightly effeminate young men and old ladies. 
Those are the sections of humanity with whom 
he feels most at home, because he has most in 
common with them. He makes a fresh will about 
once every five years, leaving a good deal of his 
property to the reigning favourites, who are prob- 
ably cousins (of his step-mother's). But most 
of them are cut out at the next revision, because 
they have shown themselves * tarsome,' or in 
some way inconsiderate. But probably it will be 
a long time before anybody reaps the benefit of 
these provisions, for apart from his gout, which 
is kept in check by his visits to Harrogate, 
Georgie is a very healthy old lady. He lives a 
most wholesome life with his little walks and 
drives, and never, never has he committed any 
excesses of any sort. These very ageing things, 
the passions, have never vexed him, and he will 
no doubt outlive most of those who from time to 
time have been beneficiaries under his will. 

After all he has done less harm than most 

44 



AUNT GEORGIE 

people in the world, for no one ever heeded his 
gossip, and even if he has not done much good 
or made other people much happier, he has al- 
ways been quite good and happy himself, for such 
malice as he impotently indulged in he much en- 
joyed, and he hurt nobody by it. 

It would be a very cruel thing to think of 
sending poor Georgie to Hell; but it must be con- 
fessed that, if he went to Heaven, he would make 
a very odd sort of angel. 



QUACK-QUACK 
CHAPTER THREE 



CHAPTER THREE 
QUACK-QUACK 

UNDYING INTEREST IN THINGS AB- 

struse, experimental, or charlatanish keeps Mrs. 
Weston perennially young. She has a small pink 
husband, who desires nothing more of life than to 
be allowed a room to himself, regular meals, a 
little walk after lunch followed by a nap at his 
club, and a quantity of morning and evening 
papers to read. Indeed it may be said of him that 
the morning and evening papers were his first day 
and will certainly be his last, for he is the sort of 
person who will die suddenly and quietly after din- 
ner in his arm-chair. All those simple needs are 
easily supplied him, for when, for reasons to be 
subsequently mentioned, he cannot get regular 
meals at home he procures them at the Carlton 
grill-room. 

The two have no children, and her husband 
being so simply provided for, Mrs. Weston has 
plenty of leisure to pursue her own weird life. 
She began, as most students of the faddish side of 
life do, by using her excellent physical health as 
a starting-point for hypochondria, and proceeded 
to cure herself of imaginary ailments with such 
ruthless ferocity that if she had not stopped in 
time, she might really have become ill. As it was, 

49 



QUACK-QUACK 

she arrested her downward course of healing be- 
fore it had done anything more than make her 
thin, and took to another fad. But she resumed 
her pleasant plumpness when she embraced spirit- 
ualism, for spiritualism for some obscure reason 
almost invariably causes people to lay on flesh. 

To begin at the beginning of her quackings, she 
was about thirty when the shattering conviction 
came over her, after reading a little book about 
gout, that she entirely consisted of uric acid. This 
painful self-revelation caused her husband to be- 
come a regular habitue of the Carlton grill-room, 
for he was not strong enough to stand the ideal 
regime which blasted his once comfortable home. 
For a day or two he insisted on continuing his 
suicidal diet, but he found it impossible to enjoy 
his cutlet when his wife told him that all he ate 
turned the moment he had swallowed it, into 
waste products, and that his apparent appetite 
was merely the result of fermentation. Such news 
when he was at lunch quite spoiled his pleasure 
and stopped his fermentation. For herself, she 
proceeded to obtain body-building materials out 
of nuts and cheese, and calorics out of the oil with 
which she soaked the salads that were hoary with 
vegetable salts. All tea and coffee were, of 
course, forbidden, since they reeked of purins, 

50 



QUACK-QUACK 

while If you drank anything at meals, you might 
just as well have a glass of prussic add then and 
there, In order to get It over quicker. Probably 
If anyone had told her only to eat between meals, 
she would have tried that too. But all day the 
kitchen boiler rumbled with the ebullition of the 
oceans of hot water that had to be drunk In the 
middle of the morning and the middle of the 
afternoon, and before going to bed. It had to be 
sipped, and since at each sitting a quart or so must 
be lodged within her, the process was a lengthy 
one, and she could not get out of doors very much. 
But exercise and air were provided for by courses 
of stretchings and bendings and flicklngs and klck- 
ings done by an open window In front of a chart 
and a looking-glass, followed by spells of com- 
plete relaxation (which meant lying down on the 
floor) . Then there were deep-breathing exercises, 
in which Mrs. Weston had to draw in her breath 
very slowly, hold It till she got purple In the face 
and the veins stood out like cords on her benig- 
nant forehead, and emit it all In one hurricane- 
puff. The dizziness and queer sensations that 
sometimes followed she took to be a proof of how 
much good It was doing her. Strange hungry- 
looking visitors used to arrive at queer hours, and 
talk to their enthralled pupil in an excited manner 

51 



QUACK-QUACK 

about arterio-sclerosis, and chromagens, and pro- 
duce out of their pockets little packets of tough 
food, tasting of travelling-bags, which they masti- 
cated very thoroughly, and which in the space of 
a square inch contained the nutritive value of eight 
mutton chops and two large helpings of apple tart. 
Fortified by this they launched into the functions 
and derangements of the principal organs of the 
body, with an almost obscene wealth of detail, 
while Mrs. Weston used to sit in rapt attention 
to those sybils and long for dinner time to come 
in order that she might thwart her uric acid 
again. 

She pursued her meatless course for several 
weeks with fanatic enthusiasm, and having been 
perfectly well before, found that, apart from a 
slight falling away of flesh, her iron constitution 
stood the strain remarkably well. Then while the 
nuts were yet in her mouth, so to speak, it struck 
her that she ought to go in for breathing exercises 
more thoroughly, and found that they led straight 
into the lap of the wisdom of the Yogis. This 
philosophy instantly claimed her whole attention, 
and she steeped herself in its manuals, and ad- 
vertised in the Morning Post for a Guru. An 
individual in a turban answered this in person, 
but as, after his second visit she found that a 

52 




olu^t^. dk^acA: 



QUACK-QUACK 

valuable ring was missing, which at his bidding 
she had taken off her finger in order to be less 
trammelled by material bonds, she decided to be 
her own Guru, and with the chapter on * Postures ' 
open before her, practised tying herself into 
knots. Her abstinence from meat came in useful, 
since a light diet was recommended by her new 
ideal in life, so also did her practice in deep- 
breathing, for Pranayama was entirely concerned 
with that, and when you had mastered Postures 
and Pranayama you would live in perfect health 
and vigour, as long as you chose. Again her 
superb physical health stood her in good stead, 
and she neither dislocated her limbs from Pos- 
tures, nor had a single stroke of apoplexy from 
holding her breath. During the Yogi attack her 
husband ceased to take his meals at the Carlton 
grill-room, for he was allowed meat again in 
moderation. But he always used to go out for 
a walk when the great breathings began in the 
middle of the morning, since he hated the idea 
that in the next room Jane was sitting cross- 
legged on the floor, exhaling her long-held breath 
through one nostril while she closed the other 
with her finger, muttering ' Om ! Om ! ' Long 
periods of absolute silence alternated with these 
mutterings, and it gave him an uncomfortable 

53 



QUACK-QUACK 

feeling to know that Jane was holding her breath 
all that time. Away from Chesterfield Street the 
image of her was less vivid, and when he returned 
for lunch Postures were over too, and though 
rather stiff and tired, she would declare that she 
never had known before what real health meant. 
This was always a pleasant hearing, and he 
would congratulate her on her convalescence, and 
instantly repent of his cordiality, because she 
urged him just to do a couple of Postures a day 
and see how he felt. 

Then a misfortune which within a couple of 
days she temporarily called the turning-point of 
her life, befell Mrs. Weston, for she caught a 
chill (manifestly from posturing on a cold damp 
day in front of an open window) which indicated 
its presence by a simultaneous attack of lumbago 
and a streaming cold in the head. This latter 
made the inhalation of breath through the nostrils 
quite impossible, and the former. Postures. So 
shut out from the practice of Pranayama and 
Postures, she came winging it back from the East, 
and, happening to come across a copy of the 
Christian Science Journal, flew to the bosom of 
Mrs. Eddy. Her only regret was that she had 
not left the heathen fold in time to frustrate the 
false claims of her indisposition, which had taken 

54 



QUACK-QUACK 

a firm and painful hold of her, but she had 
scarcely learned by heart the True Statement of 
Being when the severity of the symptoms began 
sensibly to diminish. In point of fact within three 
days she was perfectly well again, as she might 
have been all along if she had only known in time 
that there was no such thing as lumbago. Neither 
was there such a thing as uric acid or chro- 
magens, and in consequence, since there was noth- 
ing to fear from disorders that had no existence, 
she ordered an excellent dinner that evening, and 
over ox-tail soup and fish and a roast pheasant, 
of all of which she ate heartily, she discoursed 
to her husband on the new truth that had risen 
like dawn over her previously benighted horizon. 
But, such is the ingratitude of man, he felt that 
he would sooner have eaten his dinner in silence 
at the grill-room than at home to the accompani- 
ment of such preposterous harangues. And when, 
after dinner, just as he was settling down to a 
game of patience, Jane asked him to join with 
her in the recital of the True Statement of 
Being, he replied with some asperity that a True 
Statement of Balderdash was a fitter name for 
such nonsense. 

Christian Science made Mrs. Weston brighter 
and younger and more robust than ever. Being 

55 



QUACK-QUACK 

quite convinced that there were no such things 
as discomfort or evil or disease or death, she 
recognised with increased vividness that the 
world was an exceedingly pleasant place, and 
went about all day with a brilHant smile. This 
smile became rather hard and fixed when small 
false claims put in their appearance, as, for in- 
stance, when a fish-bone seemingly stuck in her 
throat, or when, reciting the True Statement of 
Being as she went upstairs, she forgot the last step 
and tumbled rather heavily on to her knees. Thus, 
in the semblance of choking or of agonising pain 
in the knee-cap, it was necessary to tie the smile 
on, so to speak, lest the false claim should get a 
foothold. What made the house more uncom- 
fortable for her husband was that his false claims 
were ignored also, so that if his study fire was 
found not to be lit, and the room in consequence 
like an ice-house, Instead of sympathising with 
him over the carelessness of the housemaid, Jane 
continued to assure him that there was no such 
thing as cold, though her teeth were chattering 
in her head. She got Into touch with other 
sufferers from these cheerful delusions, who 
seemed to him to resemble gargoyles with their 
fixed inflexible smiles, and their attitudes of de- 
termined hilarity, and the house became a perfect 

S6 



QUACK-QUACK 

Bedlam of invincible cheerfulness, which was de- 
pressing to the last degree. He had a moment of 
reviving hope when Jane woke one morning with 
a very plausible claim in a wisdom-tooth, which 
the uninitiated would have called a raging tooth- 
ache, and which he hoped might convince her. 
But learning, by telephone, from a healer that 
though the pain would certainly vanish with ab- 
sent treatment, it was permissible to go to a 
dentist in order to save time, for mere manipula- 
tion (in other words having the tooth out), his 
hopes faded again. Mrs. Eddy herself, it ap- 
peared, had consulted a dentist in such cir- 
cumstances, and Mrs. Weston did the same, and 
came home, brighter than ever, having had the 
tooth extracted quite painlessly under laughing- 
gas. The last thing she had said to herself, so 
she triumphantly announced, before she went off 
was that the extraction wouldn't hurt at all, and 
it didn't. The True Statement of Being had 
scored one triumph the more in completely anni- 
hilating not only the sense of pain, but common- 
sense also. 

Now the insidiousness of fads Is that they are 
invariably based on something which is true and 
reasonable, and thus have an appeal to reasonable 
persons. In this they are unlike superstitions, for 

57 



QUACK-QIJACK 

superstition is in its essence unreasonable, and 
Mrs. Weston would no more have bowed to the 
new moon (seen not through glass) or turned her 
money, than she would have been made miserable 
by breaking a looking-glass. She knew perfectly 
well that the fact of her seeing the new moon 
could not affect the prosperity of her investments, 
while if that amiable satellite had any power 
over her money it would certainly exercise it 
whether she curtsied or not. But her embrace 
of the vegetarian and Christian Science faith was 
undoubtedly based on reason: it was true that 
fleshless foods contained less uric acid than sirloin 
of beef: it was true also that if she or anybody 
else had a slight headache, that headache would 
in all probability efface itself quicker if she oc- 
cupied herself in other matters, and, instead of 
sitting down to think about her headache denied 
it in principle by disregarding it. But it is easily 
possible to stretch a reasonable proposition too 
far, and make it applicable to things to which it 
does not apply, and it is exactly here that the 
faddist begins to differ from reasonable people. 
A sufficiently excruciating pain cannot be ban- 
ished from the consciousness, and it is not the 
slightest use asserting that it does not exist. At 
this point, with regard to her wisdom-tooth, she 

58 



QUACK-QUACK 

became momentarily reasonable again, and had it 
out with laughing-gas like a sensible person. But 
then her mind rushed back again, like air into 
an exhausted receiver, into the vacuum of fad- 
dishness, and she became happier and more ridicu- 
lous than ever. The effect must never be denied: 
the faddist while convinced of her fad is ex- 
tremely cheerful, as is natural to one who has 
found out and is putting in practice the secret of 
ideal existence. It made poor Mr. Weston very 
uncomfortable, but since one of the strongest 
characteristics of Christian Scientists is their in- 
human disregard of other people, she did not take 
any notice of a little thing like that, and pro- 
ceeded to make home unhappy with utter 
callousness. 

But it was not her way to attach herself for 
very long to one creed: she flew, like a bee 
gathering honey from every flower, to suck the 
sweetness out of every fad, and presently she 
turned her volatile mind to the study of the un- 
seen world that she suddenly felt to be surround- 
ing her. Christian Science no doubt had its basis 
in the unseen, but in its application it was chiefly 
concerned with bodily ailments and discomforts, 
and the True Statement of Being harnessed 
itself, so to speak, to a congested liver or a sore 

59 



QUACK-QUACK 

throat. But now she went deeper yet, and took 
the final plunge of the faddist and the credulous 
into the sea of spiritualism. 

Now in this highly organised city of London, 
if you want anything you can always get on the 
track of something of the sort by a few enquiries, 
and one of Mrs. Weston's discarded vegetarians 
introduced her to the celebrated medium, and 
general fountain-head in the matters of table- 
turning, crystal-gazing, automatic writing, ma- 
terialisation, seances, planchettes and auras, the 
Princess Spookoffski. Nobody could produce 
positive proof that she was not a Russian Prin- 
cess, for Russia is a very large place, and has 
probably many princesses, nor that her com- 
panion, a small man with a chin-beard and a 
positive passion for going into trances, was not 
a Polish refugee of high birth. This august lady 
was beginning to do very good business in town, 
for London, ever Athenian in its desire for some 
new thing, had just turned its mind to psychical 
matters, and held seances with quenched lights 
in the comfortable hour between tea and dinner, 
and had much helpful converse with the spirits 
of departed dear ones, and discarnatc intel- 
ligences, that were not always remarkably 
intelligent. 

60 



QUACK-QUACK 

Mrs. Weston accordingly went by appointment 
to the Princess's flat In a small street off Charing 
Cross Road, and was received by the Polish 
refugee of high birth, who conducted her through 
several small rooms, opening out of each other, 
to the presence of the sybil. These rooms had a 
lot of muslin draped about them, and were dimly 
lit with small oil lamps in front of shrines con- 
taining images or portraits hung with faded 
yellow jasmine of the great spiritual guides from 
Moses down to Madame Blavatsky, and a faint 
smell of incense and cigarettes hung about them. 
In the last of these the Princess was sitting lost 
in profound meditation. She wore a blue robe, 
serpents of yellow and probably precious metal 
writhed up her arm, and she had a fat pasty face 
with eyebrows so black and abundant as to be 
wholly incredible. Eventually she raised her 
head, and with a deep sigh fixed her beady eyes 
on Mrs. Weston. Then in a throaty voice she 
said: 

* My child, you 'ave a purple 'alo.' 
This was very gratifying, especially when the 
Princess explained that only the most elect souls 
have purple halos, and the man with the chin- 
beard, whom the Princess called Gabriel dear, 
said that the moment he touched Mrs. Weston's 
6i 



QUACK-QUACK 

hand he knew she had power. Thereupon the 
Princess's fingers began to twitch violently, and 
Gabriel dear, explaining that Raschia, the spirit 
of an ancient Egyptian priestess, possessed her, 
brought a writing-pad and a pencil, and the 
Princess, with Raschia to guide her, dashed off 
several pages of automatic script. This was 
written in curious broken English, and the Prin- 
cess gaily explained that darling Raschia was not 
very good at English yet, for she was only 
learning. But the message was quite intelligible, 
and clearly stated that this new little friend, Mrs. 
Weston, was a being of the brightest psychical 
gifts, which must instantly be cultivated. It 
ended ' Ta, ta, darlings. Raschia must fly away. 
God bless you all.' 

It was not to be wondered at that after so 
cordial a welcome, Mrs. Weston joined Princess 
Spookoffski's circle, and went there again next 
day for a regular seance, price two guineas a 
head. There were four other persons beside the 
Princess and Gabriel and they all had purple 
halos, for the Princess was so great an aristocrat 
in the spiritual world (as well as being a Princess 
on the mortal plane) that she only ' took ' purple 
halos. The room swam with incense, a small 
musical-box was placed in the middle of the table, 

62 



QUACK-QUACK 

and hardly had the lights been put out and the 
circle made, when Gabriel, who was to be the 
medium, went oft into a deep trance, as his ster- 
torous breathing proved, and the musical-box 
began to play ' Lead, kindly Light/ On which 
the Princess said — 

' Ah, perhaps the dear Cardinal will come to 
us. Let us all sing.' 

Thereupon they all began helping the Cardinal 
to come by joining in to the best of their powers, 
with the gratifying result that before they were 
half-way through the second verse, a stentorian 
baritone suddenly joined in too, and that was 
the Cardinal singing his own hymn. He had a 
quantity of wholly edifying things to say when 
the hymn was over, such as ' beyond the darkness 
there is light,' and ' beyond death there is life,' 
and ' beyond trouble there is peace.' Having de- 
livered himself of these illuminating truths, he 
said ' Good-bye, Benedictine, my children,' and 
left the mortal plane. Thereupon there was dead 
silence again, except for Gabriel's stertorous 
breathing. 

A perfect tattoo of raps followed, and amid 
peals of spiritual laughter. Pocky announced that 
he was coming. Pocky was a dear naughty boy, 
the Princess explained to Mrs. Weston, so full 

63 



QUACK-QUACK 

of fun, and so mischievous, and had been, when 
on earth, a Hungarian violinist. Pocky's pres- 
ence was soon announced by a shrill scream from 
the lady on Mrs. Weston's right, who said the 
naughty boy had given her such a slap. Then he 
pulled the Princess's hair, and a voice close to 
Mrs. Weston said ' 'UUo, 'ullo, 'ere is a new 
friend. What a nice lady ! Kiss me, ducky,' and 
Mrs. Weston distinctly felt a touch on her neck 
below her ear. Then after another bastinado of 
raps, Pocky's face, swathed in white muslin and 
faintly luminous, appeared above the middle 
of the table. They had had lovely music that 
day, he told them, ' on the other side,' and Pocky 
had played to them. If they all said 'please,' 
he would play to them now, and after they had all 
said ' please,' play to them he did on a violin. 
His tune was faintly reminiscent of a Brahms 
valse, but as it was a spirit air it could not have 
been that. Then with a clatter the violin de- 
scended on to the middle of the table, and Pocky, 
after blowing kisses to them all, went away in 
peals of happy laughter. 

Thereafter Mrs. Weston became a prey to 
psychical things. She gazed into the crystal she 
purchased from the Princess; she sat for hours, 
pencil in hand, waiting for automatic script to 

64 



QUACK-QUACK 

outline itself on her virgin paper; she took 
excursions into astrology; she frequented a 
fashionable palmist, who gave her the most 
gratifying information about her future, and 
assured her that marvellous happiness and suc- 
cess would attend her every step in life, so long 
as she regularly consulted Mrs. Jones, say once a 
week at seven and sixpence. The Princess and 
Gabriel gave a seance in Chesterfield Street, and 
put her into communication with her great-uncle, 
whose portrait by Lawrence happened to be hung 
in the hall. The Princess had been struck with 
this the moment she saw it, for the purpleness 
of the halo (even in the oil-picture) astonished 
her, and she asked who that saint was. He had 
not been recognised as such while on the earth, 
but no doubt he had learned much afterwards, 
for his remarks at the seance that evening 
equalled Cardinal Newman*s for spiritual beauty. 
To clinch the matter, he materialised at the next 
seance, and apart from his nose, which certainly 
did resemble Gabriel's, his great-niece found that 
he exactly corresponded with her childish remem- 
brances of him. 

For several months these spiritual experi- 
ences were a source of great happiness to Mrs. 
Weston, but, though encouraged to persevere, she 

65 



QUACK-QUACK 

could never see anything in her crystal except 
the distorted reflection of the room, nor would 
Raschia do anything in the way of automatic 
script except cover the paper with angled lines 
which resembled fortifications. Similarly at the 
seances, Pocky and Uncle Robert and Cardinal 
Newman did not seem to get on, but remained 
on their respective levels of mischievousness and 
saintliness, without any further revelations. Her 
attendances became less frequent and her crystal 
grew dusty from disuse, while she found that 
whether she consulted Mrs. Jones or not, her life 
moved forward on a quite prosperous course. 
But fortunately about this time, she encountered 
a disciple of the Higher Thought, and soared 
away again into the bright zenith of another en- 
thusiasm, which still at present holds her. 

She is one of the happiest freaks in all May- 
fair, with never a dull or a despondent moment. 
The limits of a normal lifetime are not large 
enough to allow her to exhaust all the quackeries 
with which from time immemorial the inquisitive 
sons of men have deluded and delighted them- 
selves, and if she lives till ninety, which is quite 
probable, she will continue to find fresh outlets 
for her exuberant credulity. Just now she finds 
that Higher Thought is much assisted by walking 

66 



QUACK-QUACK 

with bare feet through wet grass for a quarter 
of an hour every morning. The only sufficiently 
private grass in London is a small sooty patch 
in her own back-garden. But it is grass, and it 
is usually wet in the early morning, and she has 
her bath afterwards. 



THE POISON OF ASPS 
CHAPTER FOUR 




tdtic%u ^ ^jjU • 



CHAPTER FOUR 
THE POISON OF ASPS 

HORACE CAMPBELL HAS AN UNERR- 
ing gift of smudging whatever he speaks of. As 
he speaks most of the time, he manages to 
smudge a good deal, and in consequence is in 
great demand at somewhat smudgy houses by 
reason of his appropriate and amusing conversa- 
tion. Every decent man would like to kick him, 
and every nice woman would like to slap his fat 
white face, and so his habitats are the establish- 
ments of those not so foolishly particular. But 
though he lunches and dines without intermission 
at other people's houses, he is In no degree one 
who sings for his dinner, for he has a quite dis- 
tinct career of his own, and spends his mornings 
earning not daily bread only, but truffles and 
asparagus and all the more expensive foods, by 
teaching other people to sing. His knowledge of 
voice-production Is quite unrivalled, and he could 
probably, if he chose, turn a corn-crake Into a 
contralto. The enormous fees that he charges 
thus enable him to compress into three hours the 
period of his working day, and during that time 
he Is the father and mother of most of the beau- 
tiful noises that next year will be heard rising 
from human throats at concerts and opera- 

71 



THE POISON OF ASPS 

houses. Then, his business being over and his 
pocket fat, he puts on his black morning coat, 
and his cloth-topped shoes, his grey silk tie with 
the pearl tie-pin, and goes forth to cause himself 
as well as his pocket to grow fat, and makes a 
music of his own. 

Now his thesis, his working hypothesis, the 
basis of his conversation, is this. There are al- 
ways several possible causes which may account 
for all that happens in the busy little world of 
London, and in discussing such happenings, he 
invariably assumes the smudgiest and more 
scandalous cause. A few instances will make this 
clear. 

Example ( i ) : John Smith is engaged to Eliza 
Jones. 

Possible causes: 

(i.) John Smith loves Eliza Jones and Eliza 
Jones loves John Smith. 

(ii.) John Smith is after Eliza Jones's money. 

(iii.) It was high time that John Smith did 
marry Eliza Jones. 

Of these possible causes Horace Campbell 
leaves cause (i.) out of the question as not worth 
consideration. Cause (ii.) may account for it, 
but he invariably prefers cause (iii.)- 

Or again — 

72 



THE POISON OF ASPS 

Example (2) : Mrs. Snookes went to the opera 
with Mr. Snookes. 

Probable causes: 

(i.) Husband and wife went to the opera be- 
cause they like going to the opera. 

(ii.) Mrs. Snookes has an affair with the fa- 
mous tenor Signor Topnotari. 

(iii.) Mr. Snookes is paid £2:2:0 a night to 
applaud the soprano Signora Beeinalt. 

It is idle to point out which cause Horace 
Campbell proceeds to discuss. 

Example (3) : An eminent statesman goes into 
the country for a week-end. 

Possible causes: 

(i.) The eminent statesman needs rest. 

(ii.) * Somebody * goes with him. 

Horace Campbell's law of causation again 
applies. 

Here then is the postulate which lies at the 
root of his conversation, his standpoint towards 
life. He does not bear ill-will towards those on 
whose conduct he habitually places the worst con- 
ceivable motive, and he has no political or per- 
sonal objection to the eminent statesman, whom 
he would be very glad to know: it is merely that 
a nasty thing perches on his mind with greater 
facility than a nice one, and evokes greater sym- 

73 



THE POISON OF ASPS 

pathy there. Scandalous innuendoes seem to him 
more amusing than innocent interpretations, and 
so too, it appears, do they seem to those at whose 
tables he makes himself so entertaining. His 
stories are considered ' too killing,' whereas there 
is nothing very killing about the notion that Mr. 
and Mrs. Snookes went to the opera because they 
liked music. Also he has a perfect command of 
the French language, and often for the sake of 
guileless butlers and footmen he tells his little 
histories in French, which produces an impression 
of intrigue and wit in itself. Love-affairs, the 
theme round which he revolves, are no doubt of 
perennial human interest, but he has but little 
sympathy with a love-affair founded on or cul- 
minating in marriage. It must have some taint 
of the illicit to be worth his busy embroidering 
needle; the other has a touch of the bourgeois 
about it. Suggestlveness is more to his mind than 
statement, hints than assertions. To judge by 
his conversation you would think that he and the 
world generally swam in fathomless oceans of 
vice, but as far as conduct goes, he never swam 
a stroke. At the utmost he took off his shoes 
and stockings, and paddled at the extreme edge 
of that unprofitable sea. He just pruriently pad- 
dles there with his fat white feet. . . . 

74 



THE POISON OF ASPS 

It has been said that every decent man would 
like to kick him, but In justice to him It must be 
added that he Is not nearly so unkindly disposed 
towards anybody. Decent men, like such bour- 
geois emotions as honest straightforward love, 
only bore him, and he merely yawns In their faces. 
But though he has no direct malice, no desire to 
injure anyone by his petites saletes, he has. It 
must be confessed, a grudge against all those 
whom he considers collectively as being at the 
top of the tree. He has enough brains to know 
that the majority of the class Mr. and Mrs. Not- 
qulte-in-lt, who are his intimate circle, have not a 
quarter of his cleverness, but what he has not 
brains to see Is that the very gifts of bellttlement 
and scandal-scattering that make him such a tre- 
mendous success with them, are exactly the gifts 
which prevent his being welcomed In more de- 
sirable circles. It would be altogether beyond the 
mark to hint that he Is in any way under a cloud : 
at the most he Is, like the cuttle-fish, enveloped 
in an obscurity of his own making. Though per- 
fectly honest himself, he would certainly, if any- 
one remarked that honesty was the best policy, 
retort that successful swindling was at least a 
good second, and It is exactly that habit of mind 
that causes him to be plante la, as he would say 

75 



THE POISON OF ASPS 

himself, among the Not-quite-In-its. Humour, of 
which he has plenty, is no doubt the salt of life, 
but all his humour has gone rancid. It is there 
all right, but it has gone bad, and gives a healthy 
digestion aches. But flies settle on it, and are 
none the worse. Though there is no direct malice 
in him towards those against whom he so in- 
cessantly uses his little toy tar-squirt, there is a 
distinct trait of jealousy, that one vice that is 
quite barren of pleasure, for of all the command- 
ments there is none except the tenth the breaking 
of which does not bring to the transgressor some 
momentary gratification. That, too, accounts in 
large measure for the raptures he causes at the 
tables of the Not-quite-in-its, for they, like him, 
yearn to be quite in it, and not being able to 
manage it, applaud this dainty use of the tar- 
squirt against those who are. They have plenty 
of money, plenty of brains, plenty of artistic 
tastes, and they would certainly scream with 
laughter if they were told that it was just the 
want of a very bourgeois quality, namely good- 
nature, that bars the fulfilment of their just de- 
sires. Yet such is the case : they are not ' kind 
inside.' They are (ever so slightly) pleased at 
other people's checks and set-backs, and herein 
in the main consists their second-rateness. 

76 



THE POISON OF ASPS 

Horace Campbell is perhaps the priest of this 
little nest of asps, and without doubt the priestess 
is the amazing Mrs. Dealtry, now flaming in the 
sunset of her witty discontented life. She is tall 
and corpulent, with wonderful vitality and quan- 
tities of auburn hair and carmine lip salve, and 
mauve scarves, and when she and Horace Camp- 
bell get together, as they do two or three times 
a day, to discuss their friends, those who die, so 
to speak, and are dismissed by them, are the lucky 
ones, for the rest they drive with whips through 
the London streets, without a rag of reputation 
to cover them. She, like Horace, has plenty of 
humour, and if the sight of a wrinkled old woman 
with a painted face, and one high-heeled foot 
in the grave, dealing out horrible innuendoes like 
a pack of cards, does not make you feel sick, you 
will enjoy her conversation very much. Years 
ago she started the theory that Horace was de- 
votedly attached to her, and for her sake com- 
mitted celibacy, and though she has changed her 
friends more often than she changes her dress, 
she still sticks to the gratifying belief that she has 
wrecked his life. 

* Horace might have done anything,' she is ac- 
customed to say, ' but he would always waste his 
time on me. Poor Horace ! such a dear, isn't he, 

77 



THE POISON OF ASPS 

but how much aged in this last year or two. And 
I can't think why somebody doesn't tell him to 
have his teeth attended to.' 

Then as Horace entered the room she made a 
place for him on the sofa. 

' Monster, come here at once,' she said. * Now 
what is the truth about Lady Genge's sudden 
disappearance? I am told he simply turned her 
out of the house, which any decent man would 
have done years ago.' 

' He did,' said Horace, ' and she always came 
in again by the back door. This time he has 
turned her out of the back door. On dit que 
" Cherchez le valet." ' 

Mrs. Dealtry gave a little scream of laugh- 
ter. 

* Last time it was the girl's music master,' she 
said. ' She will never take servants with a char- 
acter.' 

'Character for what?' asked Horace. 'So- 
briety?' 

' She was at the opera three nights ago, but 
blind drunk, though you mustn't repeat that. I'm 
told she had her tiara upside down with the points 
over her forehead. Alice Chignonette, as I call 
her, was with her, a small horse-hair bun glued 
with seccotine to the back of her head. She 

78 



THE POISON OF ASPS 

hadn't got any clothes on, but was slightly 
distempered.' 

* She always is slightly distempered, except 
when she holds four aces and four queens, and 
has seen the whole of her opponent's hand so 
that she knows whether to finesse or not. And 
is it true that the Weasel has stopped her allow- 
ance ? ' 

* Yes, he gave her a coat of dyed rabbit-skins 
with a card pour prendre conge, and a second- 
class ticket to Milwaukee where he first found 
her on the sidewalkee. What people get into so- 
ciety now ! Large bare shoulders, a perpetual 
cold in the head and the manners of a Yahoo are 
a sufficient passport. One can't go anywhere 
without running into them. Not a soul would 
speak to her at Milwaukee so she came to Lon- 
don for whitewash.' 

' And distemper.' 

' She brought that with her. The Weasel car- 
ried it in his grip-sack.' 

Horace took an enamelled cigarette-case out 
of his pocket and lit a cigarette that smelt of 
musk. 

' I saw Lily Broomsgrove to-day,' he said. 
' She has become slightly broader than she is 
long,' 

79 



THE POISON OF ASPS 

' Her conversation always was. It consists of 
seven improper adjectives and one expletive. 
That is why she is so popular. She can be easily 
understood.' 

' She seemed to have an understanding with 
Pip Rippington. He was enclosed.' 

' He ought to be. Haven't you heard? That 
golf club he started, you know. Apparently golf 
was a terminological inexactitude. I suppose it 
will all be common property soon, so I may as 
well tell you.' 

Mrs. Dealtry proceeded to tell them, and all 
the little asps hissed with pleasure. . . . 

Now there was very little truth in all that Mrs. 
Dealtry had been saying, and perhaps none at 
all in Horace Campbell's contribution, yet while 
each of them really knew the other was a liar, 
each drank it all in with the utmost avidity. Such 
malice as there was about them was completely 
impotent malice: it could not possibly matter to 
Pip Rippington, for instance, whoever he was, 
that Mrs. Dealtry and Horace had been invent- 
ing stories about him. That he had founded a 
golf club was perfectly true; that Mrs. Dealtry 
had not been welcomed as a member of it was 
true also, though there was a needless suppressio 
veri about this fact, as everybody present was 

80 



THE POISON OF ASPS 

perfectly aware of it. But it amused them in 
some rancid manner to vent spleen, just as it per- 
haps amuses asps to bite. Only, and here was 
one of Time's revenges, nobody ever cared what 
either of them said. To throw mud enough is 
proverbially supposed to ensure the sticking of 
some of it, but in the case of them and those like 
them, the proverb was falsified. They had said 
that sort of thing too often and too emphatically 
for anyone to attach the smallest importance to 
it; it was as if their victims had been inoculated 
for the poison of asps, and suffered no subsequent 
inconvenience from the bite. No one thought of 
bringing the laws about libel into play over them, 
any more than people think about invoking the 
protection of those laws against a taxi-driver who 
compensates himself in compliments for the tip 
he has not received. If they have any sense they 
get themselves into their houses and leave the 
vituperative driver outside. That is just what 
decent people did with Horace Campbell. He 
is outside still, biting the paving-stones. 

The pity of it all is the appalling waste among 
asps of brains, inventive faculty, and humour. 
If only their gifts were used to some laudable or 
even only innocent purpose, the world in general 
would gain a great deal of entertainment, and 
8i 



THE POISON OF ASPS 

the asps of the popularity and success that they 
secretly crave for. As it is, some sort of moral 
ptomaine has infected them, some invasion of 
microbes that turns their wit into poison. What- 
soever things are loathsome, whatsoever things 
are of ill report, they think of those things. All 
their wit, too, goes to waste i nobody cares two 
straws what they say, and the bitten are pathetic- 
ally unconscious of having received any injury 
whatever. That fact, perhaps, if they could thor- 
oughly realise it, might draw their fangs. 



THE SEA-GREEN 

INCORRUPTIBLE 

CHAPTER FIVE 



CHAPTER FIVE 
THE SEA-GREEN 
INCORRUPTIBLE 

CONSTANCE LADY WHITTLEMERE 
lives in a huge gloomy house in the very centre 
of Mayfair, has a majestic appearance, and is 
perfectly ready for the Day of Judgment to come 
whenever it likes. From the time when she 
learned French in the school-room (she talks it 
with a certain sonorous air, as if she was preach- 
ing a sermon in a cathedral) and played Diabelli's 
celebrated duet in D with the same gifted in- 
structress, she has always done her duty in every 
state of life. If she sat down to think, she could 
not hit upon any point in which she has not in- 
variably behaved like a Christian and a lady 
(particularly a lady). Yet she is not exactly 
Pharisaical; she never enumerates even in her 
own mind her manifold excellences, simply be- 
cause they are so much a matter of course with 
her. And that is precisely why she is so perfectly 
hopeless. She expects it of herself to do her 
duty, and behave as a lady should behave, and 
she never has the smallest misgiving as to her 
complete success in living up to this ideal. That 
being so, she does not give it another thought, 

8s 



THE SEA-GREEN 

knowing quite well that, whoever else may do 
doubtful or disagreeable things, Constance Whit- 
tlemere will move undeviatingly on in her flaw- 
less courses, just as the moon, without any 
diminution of her light and serenity, looks down 
on slums or battle-fields, strewn with the corpses 
of the morally or physically slain. And Lady 
Whittlemere, like the moon, does not even think 
of saying, ' Poor things ! ' She is much too 
lunar. 

At the age of twenty-two (to trace her distress- 
ing history) her mother informed her, at the close 
of her fourth irreproachable London season, that 
she was going to marry Lord Whittlemere. She 
was very glad to hear it, for he was completely 
congenial to her, though, even if she had been 
very sorry to hear it, her sense of duty would 
probably have led her to do as she was told. But 
having committed that final act of filial obedience, 
she realized that she had a duty to perform to 
herself in the person of the new Lady Whittle- 
mere, and climbed up on to a lofty four-square 
pedestal of her own. Her duty towards herself 
was as imperative as her duty towards Miss 
Green had been, when she learned the Diabelli 
duet in D, and was no doubt derived from the 
sense of position that she, as her husband's wife, 

86 



INCORRUPTIBLE 

enjoyed. Yet perhaps she hardly ' enjoyed ' it, 
for It was not in her nature to enjoy anything. 
She had a perfectly clear idea, as always, of 
what her own sense of fitness entailed on her, 
and she did it rigidly. ' The Thing,' in fact, was 
her rule in life. Just as It was The Thing to 
obey her governess, and obey her mother, so, 
when she blossomed out Into wifehood, The 
Thing was to be a perfect and complete Lady 
Whittlemere. Success, as always, attended her 
conscientious realisation of this. Luckily (or un- 
luckily, since her hope of salvation was thereby 
utterly forfeited) she had married a husband 
whose general attitude towards life, whose sense 
of duty and hidebound instincts, equalled her own, 
and they lived together, after that literal solemn- 
ization of holy matrimony In St. Peter's, Eaton 
Square, for thirty-four years in unbroken har- 
mony. They both of them had an unassailable 
sense of their own dignity, never disagreed on 
any topic under the sun, and saw grow up round 
them a copious family of plain, solid sons and 
comely daughters, none of whom caused their 
parents a single moment's salutary anxiety. The 
three daughters, amply dowried, got married into 
stiff mahogany families at an early age, and the 
sons continued to prop up the conservative inter- 

87 



THE SEA-GREEN 

ests of the nation by becoming severally (i.) a 
soldier, (ii.) a clergyman, (III.) a member of 
Parliament, (Iv.) a diplomatist, and they took 
into all these liberal walks of life the traditions 
and proprieties of genuine Whittlemeres. They 
were all Honourables, and all honourable, 
and all dull, and all completely conscious of 
who they were. Nothing could have been 
nicer. 

For these thirty-four years, then, Lady Whlt- 
tlemere and her husband lived together In har- 
mony and exquisite expensive pomposity. Had 
Genesis been one of the prophetical books, their 
existence might be considered as adumbrated by 
that of Adam and Eve In the Garden of Eden. 
Only there was no serpent of any kind, and their 
great house In shelter of the Wiltshire downs had 
probably a far pleasanter climate than that of 
Mesopotamia. Their sons grew up plain but 
strong, they all got Into the cricket Eleven at 
Eton, and had no queer cranky leanings towards 
vegetarianism like Abel, or to homicide like Cain, 
while the daughters until the time of their ma- 
hogany marriages grew daily more expert in the 
knowledge of how to be Whittlemeres. Three 
months of the year they spent in London, three 
more in their large property In the Highlands of 

88 



INCORRUPTIBLE 

Scotland, and the remaining six were devoted to 
Home Life at Whittlemere, where the hunting 
season and the shooting season with their large 
solid parties ushered in the Old English Christ- 
mas, and were succeeded by the quietness of Lent. 
Then after Easter the whole household, from 
major-domo to steward's-room boy, went second- 
class to London, while for two days Lord and 
Lady Whittlemere ' picnicked ' as they called it at 
Whittlemere, with only his lordship's valet and 
her ladyship's maid, and the third and fourth 
footmen, and the first kitchen-maid and the still- 
room maid and one housemaid to supply their 
wants, and made their state entry in the train of 
their establishment to Whittlemere House, Bel- 
grave Square, where they spent May, June, and 

July. 

But while they were in the country no dis- 
traction consequent on hunting or shooting parties 
diverted them from their mission in life, which 
was to behave like Whittlemeres. About two 
hundred and thirty years ago, it is true, a certain 
Lord Whittlemere had had ' passages,' so to 
speak, with a female who was not Lady Whittle- 
mere, but since then the whole efforts of the 
family had been devoted to wiping out this de- 
plorable lapse. Wet or fine, hunting and shoot- 

89 



THE SEA-GREEN 

Ing notwithstanding, Lord Whittlemere gave 
audience every Thursday to his estate-manager, 
who laid before him accounts and submitted re- 
ports. Nothing diverted him from his duty, any 
more than it did from distributing the honours of 
his shooting lunches among the big farmer-tenants 
of the neighbourhood. There was a regular cycle 
of these, and duly Lord Whittlemere with his 
guests lunched (the lunch in its entirety being 
brought out in hampers from The House) at 
Farmer Jones's, and Farmer Smith's, and 
Farmer Robertson's, complimented Mrs. Jones, 
Smith and Robertson on the neatness of their 
gardens and the rosy-facedness of their children, 
and gave them each a pheasant or a hare. Sim- 
ilarly whatever Highnesses and Duchesses were 
staying at The House, Lady Whittlemere went 
every Wednesday morning to the Mothers' 
Meeting at the Vicarage, and every Thursday 
afternoon to pay a call in rotation on three of 
the lodgekeepers' and tenants' wives. This did 
not bore her in the least: nothing in the cold 
shape of duty ever bored her. Conjointly they 
went to church on Sunday morning, where Lord 
Whittlemere stood up before the service began 
and prayed into his hat, subsequently reading the 
lessons, and giving a sovereign into the plate, 

90 



I 



INCORRUPTIBLE 

while Lady Whittlemere, after a choir practice 
on Saturday afternoon, played the organ. It 
was the custom for the congregation to wait in 
their pews till they had left the church, exactly 
as if it was in honour of Lord and Lady Whittle- 
mere that they had assembled here. This im- 
pression was borne out by the fact that as The 
Family walked down the aisle the congregation 
rose to their feet. Only the footman who was 
on duty that day preceded their exit, and he held 
the door of the landau open until Lady Whittle- 
mere and three daughters had got in. Lord 
Whittlemere and such sons as were present then 
took off their hats to their wife, mother, sis- 
ters and daughters and strode home across the 
Park. 

And as if this was not enough propriety for 
one day, every Sunday evening the vicar of the 
parish came to dine with the family, directly after 
evening service. He was bidden to come straight 
back from evensong without dressing, and in 
order to make him quite comfortable Lord Whit- 
tlemere never dressed on Sunday evening, and 
made a point of reading the Guardian and the 
Church Family Newspaper in the interval between 
tea and dinner, so as to be able to initiate Sab- 
batical subjects. This fortunate clergyman was 

91 



THE SEA-GREEN 

permitted to say grace both before and after 
meat, and Lord Whittlemere always thanked him 
for ' looking in on us.' To crown all he invaria- 
bly sent him two pheasants and a hare during the 
month of November and an immense cinnamon 
turkey at Christmas. 

In this way Constance Whittlemere's married 
life was just the flower of her maiden bud. The 
same sense of duty as had inspired her school- 
room days presided like some wooden-eyed Jug- 
gernaut over her wifehood, and all her freedom 
from any sort of worry or anxiety for these thirty- 
four years served but to give her a shell to her 
soul. She became rounded and water-tight, she 
got to be embedded in the jelly of comfort and 
security and curtseying lodge-keepers' wives, and 
* yes-my-lady '-Sunday-Schools. Such rudiments 
of humanity as she might possibly have once been 
possessed of shrivelled like a devitahsed nut- 
kernel, and, when at the end of these thirty-four 
years her husband died, she was already too 
proper, too shell-bound to be human any longer. 
Naturally his death was an extremely satisfactory 
sort of death, and there was no sudden stroke, 
nor any catching of vulgar disease. He had a 
bad cold on Saturday, and, with a rising tem- 
perature, insisted on going to church on Sunday. 

92 



INCORRUPTIBLE 

Not content with that, in the pursuance of perfect 
duty he went to the stables, as usual, on Sunday 
afternoon, and fed his hunters with lumps of 
sugar and carrots. It is true that he sent the 
second footman down to the church about the 
time of evensong, to say that he was exceedingly 
unwell, and would have to forgo the pleasure of 
having Mr. Armine to dinner, but the damage 
was already done. He developed pneumonia, lin- 
gered a decorous week, and then succumbed. All 
was extremely proper. 

It is idle to pretend that his wife felt any sense 
of desolation, for she was impervious to every- 
thing except dignity. But she decided to call her- 
self Constance Lady Whittlemere, rather than 
adopt the ugly name of Dowager. There was 
a magnificent funeral, and she was left very well 
off. 

Le Rot est mort: Vive le Rot: Captain Lord 
Whittlemere took the reins of government into 
his feudal grasp, and his mother with four rows 
of pearls for her life, two carriages and a pair 
of carriage horses and a jointure of £6000 a year 
entered into the most characteristic phase of her 
existence. She was fifty-six years old, and since 
she proposed to live till at least eighty, she bought 
the lease of a great chocolate-coloured house in 

93 



THE SEA-GREEN 

Mayfair with thirty years to run, for it would 
be very tiresome to have to turn out at the age 
of seventy-nine. As befitted her station, it was 
very large and gloomy and dignified, and had five 
best spare bedrooms, which was just five more 
than she needed, since she never asked anybody 
to stay with her except her children's governess, 
poor Miss Lyall, for whom a dressing-room was 
far more suitable : Miss Lyall would certainly be 
more used to a small room than a large one. 
She came originally to help Lady Whittlemere 
to keep her promise as set forth in the Morning 
Post to answer the letters of condolence that had 
poured in upon her in her bereavement, but before 
that gigantic task was over, Lady Whittlemere 
had determined to give her a permanent home 
here, in other words, to secure for herself some- 
one who was duly conscious of the greatness of 
Whittlemeres and would read to her or talk to 
her, drive with her, and fetch and carry for her. 
She did not propose to give Miss Lyall any re- 
muneration for her services, as is usual in the 
case of a companion, for it was surely remunera- 
tion enough to provide her with a comfortable 
home and all found, while Miss Lyall's own prop- 
erty of £ 1 00 a year would amply clothe her, and 
enable her to lay something by. Lady Whittle- 

94 



INCORRUPTIBLE 

mere thought that everybody should lay some- 
thing by, even if, like herself, nothing but the 
total extinction of the British Empire would de- 
prive her of the certainty of having £6000 a year 
as long as she lived. But thrift being a duty, 
she found that £5000 a year enabled her to pro- 
cure every comfort and luxury that her limited 
imagination could suggest to her, and instead of 
spending the remaining £1000 a year on charity 
or things she did not want, she laid it by. Miss 
Lyall, in the same way could be neat and tidy 
on £50 a year, and lay by £50 more. 

For a year of mourning Constance Whittle- 
mere lived in the greatest seclusion, and when 
that year was out she continued to do so. She 
spent Christmas at her son's house, where there 
was always a pompous family gathering, and 
stayed for a fortnight at Easter in a hotel at 
Hastings for the sake of sea-breezes. She spent 
August in Scotland, again with her son, and 
September at Buxton, where further to fortify her 
perfect health, she drank waters and went for 
two walks a day with Miss Lyall, whose hotel 
bills she, of course, was answerable for. Miss 
Lyall similarly accompanied her to Hastings, but 
was left behind in London at Christmas and 
during August. 

95 



THE SEA-GREEN 

A large establishment was of course necessary 
in order to maintain the Whittlemere tradition. 
Half-a-dozen times in the season Lady Whittle- 
mere had a dinner-party which assembled at eight, 
and broke up with the utmost punctuality at half- 
past ten, but otherwise the two ladies were almost 
invariably alone at breakfast;, lunch, tea, and 
dinner. But a cook, a kitchen-maid, and a 
scullery-maid were indispensable to prepare those 
meals, a still-room maid to provide cakes and 
rolls for tea and breakfast, a butler and two 
footmen to serve them, a lady's maid to look 
after Lady Whittlemere, a steward's room boy 
to wait on the cook, the butler, and the lady's 
maid, two housemaids to dust and tidy, a coach- 
man to drive Lady Whittlemere, and a groom 
and a stable-boy to look after the horses and 
carriages. It was impossible to do with less, and 
thus fourteen lives were spent in maintaining the 
Whittlemere dignity downstairs, and Miss Lyall 
did the same upstairs. With such an establish- 
ment Lady Whittlemere felt that she was enabled 
to do her duty to herself, and keep the flag of 
tradition flying. But the merest tyro in dignity 
could see that this could not be done with fewer 
upholders, and sometimes Lady Whittlemere had 
grave doubts whether she ought not to have a hall- 

96 



INCORRUPTIBLE 

boy as well. One of the footmen or the butler 
of course opened the front-door as she went In 
and out, and the hall-boy with a quantity of 
buttons would stand up as she passed him with 
fixed set face, and then presumably sit down 
again. 

The hours of the day were mapped out with a 
regularity borrowed from the orbits of the stars. 
At half-past nine precisely Lady Whittlemere en- 
tered the dining-room where Miss Lyall was 
waiting for her, and extended to her companion 
the tips of four cool fingers. Breakfast was eaten 
mostly In silence, and if there were any letters for 
her (there usually were not) Lady Whittlemere 
read them, and as soon as breakfast was over an- 
swered them. After these literary labours were 
accomplished. Miss Lyall read Items from the 
Morning Post aloud, omitting the leading articles 
but going conscientiously through the smaller 
paragraphs. Often Lady Whittlemere would 
stop her. ' Lady Cammerham Is back In town Is 
she?' she would say. 'She was a Miss Pulton, 
a distant cousin of my husband's. Yes, Miss 
Lyall?' 

This reading of the paper lasted till eleven, at 
which hour. If fine, the two ladles walked In the 
Green Park till half-past. If wet, they looked out 

97 



THE SEA-GREEN 

of the window to see if it was going to clear. At 
half-past eleven the landau was announced (shut 
if wet, open if fine), and they drove round and 
round and round and round the Park till one. At 
one they returned and retired till half-past, when 
the butler and two footmen gave them lunch. At 
lunch the butler said, ' Any orders for the car- 
riage, my lady?* and every day Lady Whittle- 
mere said, ^ The victoria at half-past two. Is 
there anywhere particular you would like to go. 
Miss Lyall?' Miss Lyall always tried to sum- 
mon up her courage at this, and say that she would 
like to go to the Zoological Gardens. She had 
done so once, but that had not been a great suc- 
cess, for Lady Whittlemere had thought the 
animals very strange and rude. So since then she 
always replied : 

' No, I think not, thank you. Lady Whittle- 
mere.* 

They invariably drove for two hours in the 
summer and for an hour and a half in the winter, 
and this change of hours began when Lady 
Whittlemere came back from Harrogate at the 
end of September, and from Hastings after 
Easter. Little was said during the drive, it being 
enough for Lady Whittemere to sit very straight 
up in her seat and look loftily about her, so that 

98 




rte. Sd.^AOtK ^^C<A/U.jXjAc . 



INCORRUPTIBLE 

any chance passer-by who knew her by sight 
would be aware that she was behaving as befitted 
Constance Lady Whittemere. Opposite her, not 
by her side, sat poor Miss Lyall, ready with a 
parasol or a fur boa or a cape or something in 
case her patroness felt cold, while on the box 
beside Brendon the coachman sat the other foot- 
man, who had not been out round and round and 
round the Park in the morning, and so in the 
afternoon went down Piccadilly and up Regent 
Street and through Portland Place and round and 
round Regent's Park, and looked on to the back 
of the two fat lolloping horses which also had 
not been out that morning. There they all went, 
the horses and Brendon and William and Miss 
Lyall in attendance on Constance Lady Whittle- 
mere, as dreary and pompous and expensive and 
joyless a carriage-load as could be seen in all 
London, with the exception, possibly, of Black 
Maria. 

They returned home in time for Miss Lyall 
to skim through the evening paper aloud, and 
then had the tea with the cakes and the scones 
from the still-room. After tea Miss Lyall read 
for two hours some book from the circulating 
library, while Lady Whittlemere did wool work. 
These gloomy tapestries were made into screens 

99 



THE SEA-GREEN 

and chair-seats and cushions, and annually one 
(the one begun in the middle of November) was 
solemnly presented to Miss Lyall on the day that 
Lady Whittlemere went out of town for Christ- 
mas. And annually she said: 

' Oh, thank you, Lady Whittlemere; is it really 
forme?" 

It was: and she was permitted to have it 
mounted as she chose at her own expense. 

At 7.15 P.M. a sonorous gong echoed through 
the house; Miss Lyall finished the sentence she 
was reading, and Lady Whittlemere put her 
needle into her work, and said it was time to 
dress. At dinner, though both were teetotallers, 
wine was offered them by the butler, and they 
both refused it, and course after course was pre- 
sented to them by the two footmen in white 
stockings and Whittlemere livery and cotton 
gloves. Port also was put on the table with 
dessert, this being the bottle which had been 
opened at the last dinner-party, and when Lady 
Whittlemere had eaten a gingerbread and drunk 
half a glass of water they went, not Into the morn- 
ing-room which they had used during the day, 
but the large drawing-room upstairs with the 
Louis Seize furniture and the cut-glass chande- 
liers. Every evening it was all ablaze with lights, 

100 



INCORRUPTIBLE 

and the fire roared up the chimney: the tables 
were bright with flowers, and rows of chairs were 
set against the wall. Majestically Lady Whittle- 
mere marches into it, followed by Miss Lyall, 
and there she plays patience till 10.30 while 
Miss Lyall looks on with sycophantic congratu- 
lations at her success, and murmured sympa- 
thy if the cards are unkind. At 10.30 Brank- 
some the butler throws open the door and 
a footman brings in a tray of lemonade and 
biscuits. This refreshment is invariably refused 
by both ladies, and at eleven the house is 
dark. 

Now the foregoing catalogue of events accu- 
rately describes Lady Whittlemere's day, and in 
it is comprised the sum of the material that makes 
up her mental life. But it is all enacted in front 
of the background that she is Lady Whittlemere. 
The sight of the London streets, with their mil- 
lion comedies and tragedies, arouses in her no 
sympathetic or human current: all she knows is 
that Lady Whittlemere is driving down Picca- 
dilly. When the almond blossom comes out in 
Regent's Park, and the grass is yellow with the 
flowering of the spring bulbs, her heart never 
dances with the daffodils; all that happens is that 
Lady Whittlemere sees that they are there. She 

lOI 



THE SEA-GREEN 

subscribes to no charities, for she Is aware that 
her husband left her this ample jointure for her- 
self, and she spends such part of It as she does 
not save on herself, on her food and her house 
and her horses and the fifteen people whose busi- 
ness it is to make her quite comfortable. She has 
no regrets and no longings, because she has al- 
ways lived perfectly correctly, and does not want 
anything. She is totally without friends or ene- 
mies, and she is never surprised nor enthusiastic 
nor vexed. About six times a year, on the day 
preceding one of her dinners. Miss Lyall does 
not read aloud after tea, but puts the names of 
her guests on pieces of cardboard, and makes a 
map of the table, while the evening she leaves 
London for Hastings or Scotland she stops play- 
ing patience at ten, in order to get a good long 
night before her journey. She does the same on 
her arrival in town again so as to get a good long 
night after her journey. She takes no interest in 
politics, music, drama, or pictures, but goes to 
the private view of the Academy as May comes 
round, because The Thing recommends it. And 
when she comes to die, the life-long consciousness 
of The Thing will enable her to meet the King 
of Terrors with fortitude and composure. He 
will not frighten her at all. 

102 



INCORRUPTIBLE 

And what on earth will the Recording Angel 
find to write in his book about her? He cannot 
put down all those drives round the Park, and 
all those games of patience, and really there is 
nothing else to say. . . . 



THE ETERNALLY 

UNCOMPROMISED 

CHAPTER SIX 



CHAPTER SIX 
THE ETERNALLY 
UNCOMPROMISED 

WINIFRED AMES WAS THE YOUNGEST 

of a family of six girls, none of whom an in- 
dustrious mother had managed to foist on to 
incautious husbands. They were all plain and 
square and strong (like carpets of extra width), 
and when seated at the family table in Warwick 
Square with their large firm mother at one end 
and a mild dimunitive father at the other, re- 
sembled a Non-Commissioned Officers' mess. 
But Winifred was an anomaly, a freak in this 
array of stalwart maidenhood: there was some- 
thing pretty about her, and, no less marked a 
difference between her and her sisters, something 
distinctly silly about her. Florence and Mary 
and Diana and Jane and Queenie were all silent 
and swarthy and sensible, Winifred alone In this 
barrack of a house represented the lighter side 
of life. A secret sympathy perhaps existed be- 
tween her and her father, but they had little 
opportunity to conspire, for he was packed off to 
the City Immediately after breakfast, and on his 
return given his dinner, and subsequently a pack 
of cards to play patience with. 

She had a certain faculty of imagination, and 
107 



THE ETERNALLY 

her feathery little brains were constantly and 
secretly occupied in weaving exotic and senti- 
mental romances round herself. If in her walks 
she received the casual homage of a stare from 
a passer-by in the street, she flamed with unsub- 
stantial surmises. Positively there was nothing 
too silly for her; if the passer-by was shabby and 
disordered she saw in him an eccentric million- 
aire or a mysterious baronet, casting glances of 
respectful adoration at her; if he was well- 
dressed and pleasant to the eye she saw — well, 
she saw another one. There would be a wild 
and fevered courtship, at the end of which, in a 
mist of rice and wedding-bells, she would enter 
the magnificent Rolls-Royce and drive away, a 
lady of title, between the lines of the guard of 
honour furnished by her unfortunate sisters. 

She kept these lurid imaginings strictly to her- 
self, aware that neither Florence nor Mary nor 
Diana nor Jane nor Queenie would extend a sym- 
pathetic hearing to them. As far as that went 
she was sensible enough, for her imagination, 
lurid as it was, was right in anticipating a very 
flat and stern reception for them if she confided 
them to her sisters. But since she never ran the 
risk of having them dispersed by homely laughter, 
her day-dreams became more and more real to 

lo8 



UNCOMPROMISED 

her, and at the age of twenty-two she was, in a 
word, silly enough for anything. 

Then the amazing thing happened. A real 
baronet, a concrete, middle-aged, wealthy, deli- 
cate baronet who was accustomed to dine at the 
Non-Commissioned Officers' mess once or twice 
in the season, proposed to her, and it appeared 
that all her imaginings had not been so silly after 
all. She accepted him without the smallest hesi- 
tation, feeling that ' faith had vanished into 
sight.' Besides, her mother was quite firm on 
the subject. 

Sir Gilbert Falcon (such was his prodigious 
name) was a hypochondriac of perfectly amiable 
disposition, and his Winny-pinny, as he fatuously 
called her, was at first extremely contented. He 
treated her like a toy, when he was well enough 
to pay any attention to her; and in the manner 
of a little girl with her doll, he loved dressing 
her up in silks and jewels, with an admiration 
that was half child-like, half senile, and com- 
pletely unmanly. It pleased his vanity that he, a 
little, withered, greenish man, should have se- 
cured so young and pretty a wife, and finding 
that green suited her, gave her his best jade neck- 
lace, the beads of which were perfectly matched, 
and represented years of patient collecting. He 
109 



THE ETERNALLY 

gave her also for her lifelong adornment the 
famous Falcon pearls, which pleased her much 
more. She wore the jade by day, and the pearls 
in the evening, and he would totter after her, 
when he felt well enough, into the Rolls-Royce 
(for the Rolls-Royce had come true also) and 
take her to dine at the Savoy. Afterwards, when 
he had drunk his tonic, which he had brought 
with him in a little bottle, he often felt sufficiently 
robust to go on to a revue, where he took a box. 
There he would sit, with a shawl wrapped around 
his knees, and hold her hand, and tell her that 
none of the little ladies on the stage were half 
so enchanting as his Winny-pinny. 

Of course he could not indulge in such de- 
bauches every night, and the evenings were many 
when they dined at home and he went to bed at 
half-past nine. Then when he was warmly tucked 
up with a hot-water bottle, and an eider-down 
quilt, he would like her to sit with him, and read 
to him till he got drowsy. Then he would say, 
' Fm getting near Snooze-land, Winny : shall we 
just talk a little, until you see me dropping off? 
And then, my dear, if you want to go out to some 
ball or party, by all means go, and dance away. 
Such a strong little Winny-pinny to dance all 
night, and be a little sunbeam all day — ' And 

no 



UMCOMPROMISED 

his wrinkled eyelids would close, and his mouth 
fall open, and he would begin to snore. On 
which his Winny-pinny gently got up, and after 
shading the light from the bed, left the room. 

At first she was vastly contented. Being a 
quite unreal little creature herself, it seemed de- 
licious that her husband should call her his fairy 
and his Winny-pinny and his sunbeam, and only 
require of her little caresses and butterfly-kisses 
and squeezes. All the secret sentimental imagin- 
ings of her girlhood seemed to be translated into 
actual life; the world was very much on the lines 
of the day-dreams she had never ventured to tell 
her sisters. But by degrees fresh horizons 
opened, and her imagination, reinforced by con- 
tinuous reading of all the sentimental trash that 
she could find in circulating libraries, began to 
frame all sorts of new adventures for herself. 
Just as, in her girlhood, she had had visions of 
baronets and millionaires casting glances of hope- 
less adoration at her in the streets, so now, when 
she had got her baronet all right, she still clung to 
the idea of others looking at her with eyes of 
silent longing. She decided (in a strictly im- 
aginative sense) to have a lover who pined for 
her. 

Now with her pretty meaningless face, pink 
III 



THE ETERNALLY 

and white, with her large china-blue eyes, and 
yellow hair, it was but natural that there were 
many men who looked with interest and admira- 
tion at her, and were very well content to sit and 
talk to her in secluded corners at the balls to 
which she so often went alone. After a few days* 
indecision she settled that the hopeless and pining 
swain (for she was determined to be a faithful 
wife, that being part of the romance) should be 
Joe Bailey, a pale and willowy young soldier, who 
spent most of the day at the manicurist and most 
of the night in London ball-rooms. From the 
first time she had seen him, so she now told her- 
self, having adopted him as her lover, she had 
known that there was some secret sympathy 
between them; a chord (this came out of the 
circulating library) vibrated between their two 
souls. His pallor was instantly accounted for, 
so too was the tenderness with which he held 
her hand when they danced together: In spite of 
his noble reticence his soul had betrayed its secret 
to her. 

After a week or two of noble reticence on his 
part, she came to the conclusion that she must 
also pine for him, else there would be no nobility 
in her fixed determination to be faithful to her 
husband. She flattered herself that she was get- 

112 



UNCOMPROMISED 

ting on nicely with this, when the most dreadful 
thing happened, for Joe Bailey became engaged 
to somebody quite different, a real live girl with 
a great appetite, whose vocabulary was chiefly 
confined to the word ' top-hole.' Winifred herself 
was ' top-hole,' so was Joe Bailey, so were dogs, 
golfin' and dancin'. Anything that was not ' top- 
hole ' was ' beastly.' 

This was very disconcerting, and seeking safety 
in numbers Winifred decided to have quantities 
of lovers, for it was not likely that they should 
all go and marry somebody else. To ensure 
greater security she included in her list several 
married men, who had met her too late. Thus 
amply provided, she plunged into a new set of 
adventures. 

The situation thus created was truly thrilling, 
and the thrill was augmented by amorous little 
sallies on her husband's part. His nerve tonic 
suited him, and about this time he used often to 
go out to dinner with her, and even come on for 
an hour to a ball, where he sat in a corner, feeding 
his vitality with the sight of all the youth and 
energy that whirled in front of him. He liked 
seeing his Winny-pinny enjoy herself, and gave 
little squeals of delight when he saw her dancing 
(her dancing was really admirable) with a series 

113 



THE ETERNALLY 

of vigorous young men. Then as they drove 
away together (for when he went to a ball with 
her, she had to come away with him) he would 
squeeze her hand and say: 

* Who was that last young man my Winny- 
pinny danced with ? And who was it in the dance 
before who looked at her so fondly? And who 
was it she sat out with all that time? But her 
old man was watching her : oh, he had his eye on 
her!' 

Here then was the thrill of thrills in the new 
situation. Gilbert had noticed how many men 
were in love with her. And before long she 
added to herself the almost inevitable corollary, 
* Gilbert is so terribly jealous.' 

But in spite of Gilbert's terrible jealousy, and 
the suffocating crowds of lovers, nothing par- 
ticular happened. The lovers all remained nobly 
reticent, and a fresh desire entered her circulat- 
ing-library soul. She must get talked about: peo- 
ple other than Gilbert must notice the fatal spell 
that she exercised broadcast over the adoring 
males of London: she must get compromised, 
somehow or other she must get compromised. 

According to the circulating library there was 
nothing easier. A note with a few passionate 
words addressed to her had only to be picked up 

114 



UNCOMPROMISED 

by somebody else's wife, or somebody else's 
husband had only to be found on his knees at 
midnight in her boudoir (a word she affected) 
and the thing was done. But, as always, it was 
the premier pas qui coute, and these enchanting 
situations, she supposed, had to be led up to. 
A total stranger would not go on his knees at 
midnight in her boudoir, or leave passionate notes 
about; she had to rouse in another the emotion 
on which were built those heavenly summits, and 
begin, so to speak, in the valleys. 

At this point a wonderful piece of luck came 
her way. The faithless Joe Bailey had his en- 
gagement broken off. It was generally supposed 
that the tophole girl found him beastly, but 
Winifred knew better. She felt convinced that he 
had broken it off on her account, finding that 
passionate celibacy was the only possible condi- 
tion for one who had met her too late. Here 
was an avenue down which compromise might 
enter, and when in answer to a broad hint of 
hers, he asked her to play golf with him at Rich- 
mond, she eagerly consented. 

The plan was that he should lunch with Sir 
Gilbert and herself, and Sir Gilbert held out 
hopes that if it was not too hot, he would drive 
down with them, sit on the verandah, or perhaps 

115 



THE ETERNALLY 

walk a hole or two with them, and drive back 
again at the conclusion of their game. But these 
hopes were shattered or — should it be said — 
more exciting hopes were gloriously mended, for 
an inspection of the thermometer convinced him 
that it would be more prudent to stay indoors 
till the heat of the day waned. So she and Joe 
Bailey drove off together in the Rolls-Royce. 

She looked anxiously round as they left the 
door in Grosvenor Square. 

* I wonder if it was wise of us to come in this 
car,' she said, timidly. 

Bailey looked critically round. 

' Why not,' he said rather stupidly. ^ Quite 
a good car, isn't it? ' 

Clearly he was not awake to the danger. 

' Oh, yes,' she said, ' but people are so ill- 
natured. They might think it odd for you and 
me to be driving about in Gilbert's car.' 

He was still odiously obtuse. 

' Well, they couldn't expect us to walk all the 
way to Richmond, could they? ' he said. 

To her great delight, Winifred saw at this 
moment a cousin of her husband's, and bowed 
and waved her hand and kissed her fingers. She 
sat very much back as she did this so that Florrie 
Falcon, who had a proverbially unkind tongue, 

ii6 



UNCOMPROMISED 

could clearly see the young man who sat by her 
side. That made her feel a little better, for it was 
even more important that other people should 
see her in the act of doing compromising things, 
than that he with whom she compromised her- 
self should be aware of the fact. During their 
game again they came across several people 
whom Bailey or she knew, who, it was to be 
hoped, would mention the fact that they had been 
seen together. 

It was a distinct disappointment to poor Wini- 
fred that this daring escapade seemed to have at- 
tracted so little notice, but she did not despair. A 
further glorious opportunity turned up indeed only 
a day or two later, for her husband was threat- 
ened with what he called a bronchial catarrh 
(more usually known as a cough) and departed 
post-haste to spend a couple of days at Brighton. 
Winifred, so it happened, was rather full of en- 
gagements, and he readily fell in with her wish 
to stop in town, and not to accompany him. So, 
the moment she had ceased kissing her finger- 
tips to him as he drove away in the Rolls-Royce 
with all the windows hermetically closed, she ran 
back into the house, and planned a daring scheme. 
She telephoned to Lady Buckhampton's, where 
she was dining and dancing that night, to say her 

117 



THE ETERNALLY 

husband had this tiresome bronchial catarrh, and 
that she was going down to Brighton with him, 
and, while the words were scarcely spoken, tele- 
poned to Joe Bailey asking him to dine with 
them. He accepted, suggesting that they should 
go to the first-night at the Criterion after dinner, 
and then go on to the Buckhamptons' dance. 

A perfect orgie of compromising situations 
swam before her, more thrilling even than the 
famous kneeling scene in her boudoir at mid- 
night. She would go to the Criterion with her 
unsuspecting lover, where certainly there would 
be many people who would go on to the Buck- 
hampton dance afterwards. They would all have 
seen her and Joe Bailey together, and even if 
they did not, he in the babble of ball-room con- 
versation would doubtless popularise the fact of 
their having been there together. He might even 
tell Lady Buckhampton, whose invitation, on the 
plea of absence at Brighton with her husband, 
she had excused herself from, about this daring 
adventure. 

The mere material performance of this evening 
came up to the brilliance of its promise. All sorts 
of people saw her and her companion, and the 
play happening by divine fitness to be concerned 
with a hero who backed out of his engagement 

ii8 



UNCOMPROMISED 

at the last moment because he loved somebody 
else, Winifred could scarcely be expected not to 
turn blue eyes that swam with sympathy on her 
poor Joe. But again this hopeless young man 
did not understand, and whispered to know if 
she wanted sixpenny-worth of opera-glasses. He 
saw her home — this she had not contemplated — 
and sat with her in the barren boudoir, smoking 
a cigarette. Surely now he would slide on to 
his knees? But he did not, and went to his ball. 
There he actually told Lady Buckhampton that 
he had dined and been to the play with Lady 
Falcon, and she only laughed and said, * Dear 
little Winny! She told me some nonsense about 
going to Brighton with her husband. How- 
dc'dof i/ow-de-do? So nice of you to have 
come.' 

Then it is true Winny almost despaired of 
this particular lover. She made one more frantic 
effort when she met him next day at lunch, and 
said, ' You must talk to your neighbour more. 
People will notice,' but this only had the effect 
of making him talk to his neighbour, which was 
not what she meant. 

She decided to give another lover a chance, 
and selected Herbert Ashton, a somewhat older 
man, who no doubt would understand her better. 
119 



THE ETERNALLY 

Several encouraging circumstances happened 
here, for her husband more than once remarked 
on the frequency with which he came to the 
house, and she thought one day that Lady Buck- 
hampton cut her in the Park. This joy, it is 
true, was of short duration, for Lady Buckhamp- 
ton asked her to spend the week-end with them 
next day, and she was forced to conclude that 
the cut had not been an intentional one. But 
it stimulated her to imagine a very touching 
scene in which Herbert, when they were alone 
together in the boudoir, was to say, ' This is 
killing me,' and fold her in his arms. For one 
moment she would yield to his fervent embrace, 
the next she would pluck herself from him and 
say, 'Herbert, I am a married woman: we met 
too late ! ' On which he would answer, ' Forgive 
me, my dearest: I behaved like a cad.' 

And then the most dreadful thing of all hap- 
pened, for part, at any rate, of her imaginings 
came true. She was with Herbert shortly after- 
wards in her boudoir, and in ordinary decent 
response to a quantity of little sighs and glances 
and glances away and affinity-gabble on her part, 
he had given her a good sound proper kiss. But 
it was real; it was as different as possible from 
all the tawdry tinsel sentimentalities which she 

120 



UNCOMPROMISED 

had for years indulged in, and it simply terrified 
her. She gave one little squeal, and instead of 
yielding for a moment to his fervent embrace, 
and saying, * Herbert, I am a married woman, 
etc.,' cried, ' Oh, Mr. Ashton ! ' which was very 
bald. 

He looked at her completely puzzled. He felt 
certain she meant him to kiss her, and had done 
so. 

' I'm sorry,' he said, ' I thought you wouldn't 
mind.' 

A dreadful silence overcharged with pathos 
followed. Then recovering herself a little, she 
remembered her part. 

* You must go now,' she said faintly, with a 
timid glance that was meant to convey the strug- 
gle she was going through. But unfortunately 
he only said ' Right oh,' and went. 

Since that day she has always retreated in 
time to prevent anything real occurring. But 
she cannot succeed in getting talked about in con- 
nection with anybody. The instinct of London 
generally, often at fault, is here perfectly correct. 
She can't be compromised — no one will believe 
anything against a woman so mild. And all the 
time, in the clutch of her sentimental tempera- 
ment, she sees herself the heroine of great ro- 

121 



THE ETERNALLY 

mances. Lately she has been reading Dante (in 
a translation) and feels that England lacks some- 
one like the mighty Florentine poet, for his 
Beatrice is waiting for him. . . . 

It is all rather sad for poor Winny-pinny. It 
is as if she desired the rainbow that hangs athwart 
the thundercloud. But ever, as faint yet pursu- 
ing she attempts to approach, it recedes with equal 
speed. Indeed, it is receding faster than she 
pursues now, for her hair is getting to be of 
dimmer gold, and the skin at the outer corners of 
those poor eyes, ever looking out for unreal 
lovers, is beginning faintly to suggest the aspect 
of a muddy lane, when a flock of sheep have 
walked over it, leaving it trodden and dinted. 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 
CHAPTER SEVEN 



CHAPTER SEVEN 
THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

A FOUNT OF PERENNIAL YOUTHFUL- 

ness has been and will be the blessing and curse 
of certain people's existence. Up to the age of 
about thirty-five for a woman and round about 
forty for a man, it Is an admirable thing to feel 
that the morning of life Is still lingering in rosy 
cloudlets about you, but when these austere ages 
have been arrived at. It Is wiser for those who still 
behave like Imperishable children to recollect, im- 
possible though they will find the realisation of it 
without exercising patience and determination, 
that, though their Immortal souls are doubtless 
imperishable, they are no longer boys and girls. 
Otherwise the dreadful fate of becoming grizzly 
kittens will soon lay ambushes for them, and to 
be a grizzly kitten does not produce at all the 
same Impression as being an Imperishable child. 
Like Erin In the song and King David in the 
psalm, they should remember and consider the 
days of old, and attempt quietly and constantly 
to do a little subtraction sum, whereby they will 
ascertain how far the days of old have receded 
from them. Their spring-tide has ebbed a long 
way since then : they are swimming In it no longer, 
they are not even paddling, but they are standing 
125 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

just a little gaunt and skinny high up on the 
beach, with wisps of dry sea-weed whistling 
round their emaciated ankles. Almost invariably 
those threatened with grizzly kittenhood are 
spare and thin, for this fact encourages the pa- 
thetic delusion that they have youthful figures, 
and in a dim light, to eyes that are losing their 
early pitilessness of vision they doubtless seem 
slim and youthful to themselves, though they 
rarely present this appearance to each other. But 
it is very uncommon to find a stout grizzly kitten : 
amplitude makes it impossible to skip about, and 
cannot be so readily mistaken by its hopeful pos- 
sessors for youthful slimness. 

Imperishable children, who are threatened 
with grizzly kittenhood, are, like other children 
and kittens, male and female. At this stage great 
indulgence must be extended to them whichever 
their sex may be, for their error is based upon 
vitality, which, however misapplied, is in itself the 
most attractive quality in the world. That they 
have no sense of time is in comparison a smaller 
consideration. For they are always cheerful, al- 
ways optimistic, and if, at the age of forty, they 
have a slight tendency to say that events of twenty 
years ago are shrouded in the mists of childhood 
and the nursery, this is but an amiable failing, 

126 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

and one that is far easier to overlook than many 
of the more angular virtues. Of the two the 
female grizzly kitten (In the early stages of the 
complaint) Is entitled to greater kindliness than 
her grizzly brother, for the obvious reason that 
in the fair of Mayfair the merry-go-round and 
the joy-wheel slow down for women sooner than 
they do for men. Thus the temptation to a 
woman of behaving as if it was not slowing 
down, is greater than to a man. It will go on 
longer for him; he has less excuse — since he has 
had a longer joy-ride — for pretending that it Is 
still quite at its height of revolving giddiness. 
She — if she is gifted with the amazing vitality 
which animates grizzly kittens — can hardly help 
still screaming and clapping her hands and 
changing hats, when first the hurdy-gurdy and the 
whirling begin to slacken, in order to persuade 
herself that they are doing nothing of the sort. If 
she is wise, she will of course slip oft the joy- 
wheel and, like Mr. Wordsworth, ' only find 
strength in what remains behind.' But if she did 
that, the danger of her grizzly kittenhood would 
be over. Pity her then, when first the slowing- 
down process begins, but give less pity to the man 
who will not accept the comparatively kinder 
burden of his middle-age. Besides, when the early 
127 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

stages of grizzly kittenhood are past, the woman 
who still clings to her skippings and her rheumatic 
antics after blind-tassels has so much the harder 
gymnastics to perform. 

Two sad concrete examples of grizzly-kitten- 
hood, both In advanced stages, await our com- 
miseration. Mrs. Begum (nee Adeline Arm- 
strong) is the first. From her childhood the 
world conspired to make a grizzly kitten of her, 
and in direct contravention of the expressed 
wishes of her godfather and godmother who said 
she was to be Adeline, insisted on calling her 
Baby. Baby Armstrong she accordingly remained 
until the age of twenty-five, when she became 
Baby Begum, and she never got further from 
that odious appellation, at her present age of 
fifty-two, than being known as Babs, while even 
now her mother, herself the grizzliest of all ex- 
isting kittens, calls her Baby still. 

Babs appeared In Mayfair at the age of seven- 
teen, and instantly took the town by storm, in 
virtue of her authentic and audacious vitality. 
She had the face of a Sir Joshua Reynolds angel, 
the figure of a Botticelli one, the tongue of a 
gamin, and the spirits of an everlasting carnival. 
Her laugh, the very sound of that delicious en- 
joyment, set the drawing-room in a roar, and her 

128 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

conversation the smoking-room, where she was 
quite at home — there was never anyone so com- 
plete as she, never such an apple of attractiveness, 
of which all could have a slice. She would ride 
in the Row of a morning, call the policeman, who 
wanted to take her name on the score of excessive 
velocity, ' Arthur dear,' and remind him how she 
had danced In the cause of police old-age pensions 
at Clerkenwell (which was perfectly true), thus 
melting his austere heart. Then, as like as not, 
she would get off her horse at the far end of 
the ladies' mile, and put on It an exhausted 
governess, with orders to the groom to see her 
safe home to Bayswater. Then she would sit on 
the rail, ask a passer-by for a cigarette, and hold 
a little court of adorers, male and female alike, 
until her horse came back again. She would, In 
rare intervals of fatigue, go to bed about four 
o'clock in the morning, when her mother was 
giving a ball in Prince's Gate, and stand on the 
balcony outside her bedroom in her nightgown, 
and talk to the remaining guests as they left the 
house, shrieking good wishes, and blowing kisses. 
Or if the fit so took her, instead of going to bed 
she would change her ball-dress for a riding- 
habit, go down to the mews with Charlie or 
Tommy or Harry, or Indeed with Bertha or 
129 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

Florrie or Madge (fitting these latter up with 
other habits) and start for a ride in the break 
of the summer morning, returning hungry and 
dewy to breakfast. Wherever she went the world 
laughed with her; she enhaloed all she shone upon. 
Chiefly did she shine upon Charlie Gordon, who, 
in the measure of a man, was a like comet to 
herself. He was some five years older than she, 
and they expected to marry each other when the 
fun became less fast and furious. In the interval, 
among other things, they had a swimming-race 
across the Serpentine one early August morning, 
and she won by two lengths. An angry Humane 
Society boat jabbed at them with hooks in order 
to rescue them. These they evaded. 

Those whom Nature threatens with grizzly 
kittenhood live too much on the surface to be 
able to spare much energy for such engrossing 
habits as falling in love, and when, at the age of 
twenty-five she suddenly determined to marry the 
small and silent Mr. Begum, nobody was sur- 
prised and many applauded. She could not go on 
swimming the Serpentine with Charhe Gordon, 
and it seemed equally unimaginable that she 
should marry a man with only £2000 a year and 
no prospects of any sort or kind. She did not 
imperatively want him, any more than he impera- 

130 



I 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

tively wanted her, and since that one conclusive 
reason for matrimony was absent, it did not par- 
ticularly matter whom she married, so long as he 
was immensely wealthy, and of an indulgent 
temper. By nationality, Mr. Begum owed about 
equal debts to Palestine, Poland, and the Bar- 
bados, and since at this epoch, Palestine at any 
rate was in the ascendant over the roofs of May- 
fair it was thought highly suitable that Baby 
Armstrong should become Baby Begum. She had 
always called Charlie Gordon, ' dear,' or * dar- 
ling,' or ' fool,' and she explained it all to him in 
the most illuminating manner. 

'Darling, you quite understand, don't you?' 
she said, as she rode beside him one morning in 
the Park. ' Jehoshaphat's a perfect dear, and he 
suits me. Life isn't all beer and skittles, other- 
wise I would buy some beer, and you would save 
up to get a second-hand skittle alley, and there 
we should be ! My dear, do look at that thing on 
the chestnut coming down this way. Is it a goat 
or isn't it? I think it's a goat. Oh don't be a 
fool, dear, you needn't be a fool. Of course 
everybody thought we were going to marry each 
other, but what can matter less than what every- 
body thinks? And besides, I know quite well that 
you haven't the slightest intention of getting 

131 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

broken-hearted about me, and the only thing you 
mind about it is that I have shown I have not got 
a broken heart about you. What really is of 
importance is what I am to call Jehoshaphat. I 
can't call him Jehu, because he doesn't do any- 
think furiously, and I can't call him " Fat," be- 
cause he's thin, and there's nothing left ! ' 

* I should call him *' darling," then,' said 
Charlie, who was still unconvinced by this 
flagrant philosophy, ' same as you call me.' 

She looked at him almost regretfully. 

* Oh, do be sensible,' she said. ' I know I'm 
right: I feel I'm right. Get another girl. There 
are lots of them, you know.' 

Charlie had the most admirable temper. 

* I'll take your advice,' he said. * And, anyhow, 
I wish you the best of luck. I hope you'll be 
rippingly happy. Come on, let's have a gallop.' 

Since then, years, as impatient novelists so often 
inform us, passed. Babs's philosophy of life was 
excellent as far as it went, and the only objection 
to it was that it did not go far enough. In spite 
of his vitality, Charlie did not, as a sensible 
young man should, see about getting another girl; 
for perhaps he was wounded a little deeper than 
either he or Babs knew. The tragedy about it 
all is that they both had the constitution of grizzly 

132 




rA ^iu!»(»2 i^io^ ^ 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

kittens. He did not marry any one else, nor did 
he live into his age as that slowly increased upon 
him, and Mr. Begum got asthma. This made 
him very tiresome and wheezy, and the perpetual 
contact with senility probably prevented Babs 
from growing into her proper mould of increasing 
years. Her sense of youth was constantly fed 
by her husband's venerable habits; with him she 
always felt a girl. And the ruthless decades pro- 
ceeded in their Juggernaut march, without her 
ever seeing the toppling car that now overhangs 
her, stiff with the wooden Images of age. 
Wooden, at any rate, they will seem to her when 
she fully perceives them, and robbed of the 
graciousness and wisdom that might have clothed 
and softened them if only she had admitted their 
advent. 

As it Is, two pathetic figures confront us. 
Charlie Gordon, that slim entrancing youth, is 
just as slim (in fact slimmer in the wrong places) 
as he ever was. But he is a shade less entrancing, 
with his mincing entry into the assembling party 
than he was twenty-five years ago. There was 
no need for him to mince then, for his eager 
footsteps carried him, as with Hermes-heels, on 
the wings of youth. Now he takes little quick 
steps, and thinks it is the same thing. He is just 

133 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

as light and spry as ever (except when he is 
troubled with lumbago) but he cannot see that it 
is not the same thing. He has not noticed that 
his lean youthful jaw has a queer little fold in the 
side of it, and if he notices it, he thinks it is a 
dimple. He brushes his hair very carefully now, 
not knowing that to the disinterested observer 
the top of his head looks rather like music-paper, 
with white gaps in between the lines, and that 
it is quite obvious that he grows those thinning 
locks very long on one side of his head (just 
above the ear) and trains them in the manner of 
an espaliered pear over the denuded bone where 
once a plume used jauntily to erect itself. He is 
careful about them now, but once, not so very 
long ago, he forgot how delicately trained were 
those tresses, and went down to bathe with the 
other boys of the house. They naturally came 
detached from their proper place, and streamed 
after him as he swam, like the locks of a Rhine- 
maiden. It was rather terrible. But such as they 
are, they are still glossy raven black: there is not 
the smallest hint of grey anywhere about them. 
Again, once in days of old he had quick 
staccato little movements of his head, like some 
young wild animal, which suited the swiftness of 
his mercurial gambollings very well; to this day 

134 



' THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

that particular habit has persisted, but the effect 
of it somehow is dismally changed; it is galvanic 
and vaguely suggests St. Vitus's abominable 
dance. He still jumps about with joy when he 
is pleased, but those skippings resemble rather the 
antics of a marionette than coltish friskings. He 
feels young, at least he has that quenchless appe- 
tite for pleasure that is characteristic of the young, 
but he isn't young, and his tragedy, the role of 
the grizzly kitten, stares him in the face. Perhaps 
he will never perceive it himself, and go on as 
usual, slightly less agile owing to the increasing 
stiffness of his venerable joints, until the days of 
his sojourning here are ended. Or perhaps he 
will see it, and after a rather depressing week 
or two turn into a perfectly charming old man 
with a bald head and spectacles and a jolly 
laugh. 

Mrs. Begum's fate hangs in the balance also. 
She has begun to think it rather daring of her 
to go larking about with a boy who is easily young 
enough to be her son, whereas in the days when 
such manoeuvres were rather daring she never 
gave two thoughts to them. She still likes (or 
pretends to like) sitting up to the end of a ball, 
not in the least realizing how appalling a spectacle 
she presents in the light of a June dawn. She 

135 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

can easily be persuaded to tuck up her skirts and 
dance the tango or the fox-trot or whatever It is 
that engages the attention of the next generation, 
and if she wants to sit down, she is as likely as 
not to flop cross-legged on the floor, or to perch 
herself on a friend's knee, with a cigarette in 
one hand and a glass of champagne cup in the 
other, and tell slightly risky stories, such as 
amused the partners of her youth. But for all 
her wavings of her wand, the spell does not work 
nowadays, and when poor Babs begins to be 
naughty, it is kinder of her friends to go away. 
Kitten-like she jumps at the blind-tassel still, 
but it is weary, heavy work, and she creaks, she 
creaks. . . . 

But the most degrading exhibition of all is 
when Babs and Charlie get together. Then in 
order to show, each to each, that time writes 
no wrinkles on their azure brows, they give a 
miserable display of mature skittishness. They 
see which of them can scream loudest, laugh most, 
eat most, drink most, romp most, and, in a word, 
be grizzliest. Their manner of speech has not 
changed in the smallest degree in the lapse of 
thirty years, and to the young people about It 
sounds like some strange and outlandish tongue 
such as was current in the reign of the second 

136 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

George. They are always betraying themselves, 
too, by whistling ' Two Lovely Black Eyes ' or 
some ditty belonging to the dark ages, and to cor- 
rect themselves pretend that their mother taught 
it them when she came to kiss them good-night in 
their cribs. They do not deceive anybody else 
by their jumpings, they do not deceive each other, 
and perhaps they do not deceive themselves. But 
it is as if a curse was on them: they have got to 
be dewy and Maylike: if Charlie wants a book 
from the far end of the room he runs to get it; 
when they go into dinner together they probably 
slide along the parquet floor. He is a little deaf, 
and pretending to hear all that is said, makes 
the most idiotic replies; and she is a little blind, 
and cannot possibly read the papers without 
spectacles, which she altogether refuses to wear. 
If only they had married each other thirty years 
ago they would probably have mellowed a little, 
or at least could have told each other how ridic- 
ulous they were being. As it is, they both have 
to screw themselves up to the key of the time 
when they swam the Serpentine together. Poor 
dear old frauds, why do they try to wrench 
themselves up to concert pitch still? Such a con- 
cert pitch! such strainings and bat-like squeaks! 
It would be so much better to get a little flat 

137 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

and fluffy, on the grounds of greater comfort to 
themselves, not to mention motives of humanity 
to others. For, indeed, they are rather a ghastly 
sight, dabbing and squawking at each other on 
the sofa, in memory of days long ago. The 
young folk only wonder who those ' funny old 
buffers ' are, and they wonder even more when 
the funny old buffers insist on joining in a game 
of fives on the billiard-table, and the room re- 
sounds with bony noises as their hands hit the 
flying ball. But they scream in earnest then, 
because it does really hurt them very much. 
And then Mr. Begum gets wheeled in in his 
invalid chair with his rugs and his foot-warmers, 
and insists on talking to Charlie Gordon when 
the game is over (and his hands feel as if they 
had been bastinadoed), as if he was really an 
elderly man, and can remember the Franco- 
German war, which of course he can. But 
Charlie, though he stoutly denies the imputation, 
feels very uncomfortable, and changes the subject 
at the earliest opportunity. By this time Babs 
will have organized a game of rounders or some- 
thing violent in the garden, in order to show that 
she is young too. She is getting very nut-crackery, 
and looks tired and haggard, as indeed she is. 
But she shouts to her husband, who is much 

138 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

deafer than Charlie, ' Daddy, darling, we're 
going to play rounders ! Would you like to come 
out, or do you think it will be rather cold for 
you? Perhaps you'd be wiser not to. You won't 
play, I suppose, CharHe?' 

And Charlie, nursing his bruised hands, says, 
'Rounders? Bless me, yes. I'm not quite past 
rounders yet. Nothing like a good run-about 
game to keep you fit.' 

It keeps him so fit that he is compelled to have 
a good stiff brandy and soda afterwards, to tone 
him up for the exertion of having dinner. 

Wearily, aching in every limb, they creep into 
their respective beds. There seems to be a pillow- 
fight going on somewhere at the end of the pas- 
sage, with really young voices shrieking, and the 
swift pad of light feet. Babs thinks of joining 
it, but her fingers fall from the pillow she had 
caught up, and she gets into bed instead, thinking 
she will be up to anything after a good night. 
And she would be up to anything that could de- 
cently be required of her, if only she would not 
present her grim and dauntless figure at such 
excursions. Already Charlie is dropping into a 
sleep of utter prostration: he wants to be in good 
trim to-morrow. There he lies with his thin 
Rhine-maiden hair reposing on his pillow. But he 

139 



THE GRIZZLY KITTENS 

wakes easily, though slightly deaf, and at the first 
rattle of his door-handle when his valet calls him 
next morning he will instinctively gather it up 
over his poor bald pate. 

And they might both be so comfortable and 
jolly and suitable. There is a wounding pathos 
about them both. 



CLIMBERS: 

I. THE HORIZONTAL 

CHAPTER EIGHT 



CHAPTER EIGHT 

CLIMBERS: 

I. THE HORIZONTAL 

THE MOST CASUAL OBSERVER OF THE 

beauties and uglinesses of Nature will have 
observed that in the anatomy of that very com- 
mon object, a Tree, there are two widely different 
classes of branches. The one class grows more 
or less straight out from the trunk and after a 
horizontal career droops somewhat at the ex- 
tremities, the other grows upwards in a persever- 
ing and uniform ascent. Such branches when 
springing high up on the trunk of the tree form 
the very top of the tree. 

But though these facts are patent in vegetable 
life, and though it is clear that anybody not idiotic 
and sufficiently active can climb more or less suc- 
cessfully up a tree going higher and higher, and 
selecting for his ascent the branches that aspire, 
and not making a precarious way along the other 
class of branch which at the best Is horizontal, 
and at the worst droops downwards, It seems 
there must be greater difficulties In the ascension 
of what is known among climbers as the Tree 
of Society. For while you may see some of them 
climbing steadily higher, and ever mounting till 
their electro-plated forms are lost amid the gold 

H3 



CLIMBERS: 

of the topmost foliage, and their joyful monkey- 
cries mingle and almost are entuned with the song 
of the native birds who naturally make their nest 
there, you will see other climbers — the majority 
in fact — eagerly scrambling for ever along per- 
fectly horizontal boughs that never bring them 
any higher up at all, and eventually, depressed 
by their weight, but bend earthwards again. Un- 
like the happier apes who have a flair for altitude 
and bird-song, these less fortunate sisters have 
only a flair for clinging and proceeding. 

There are of course specimens of these Trees 
of Society in every town in England, and speci- 
mens of the monkeys who hop about them. But 
those are but small trees and the climbers small 
apes, and the climbing of these shrubs appears 
to present but moderate difficulties. The great 
specimen, the one glorious and perfect human 
vegetable which grows in England, flourishes 
only in the centre of London; its roots draw 
their nutriment from the soil of Middlesex (not 
of Surrey), and its top, resonant with birds, soars 
high into the ample ether of Mayfair. It is a 
regular monkey-puzzle, and swarms with Indus- 
trious climbers going in every direction, most of 
them, unfortunately, proceeding with infinite toil 
along horizontal branches, while others slowly or 

144 



I. THE HORIZONTAL 

swiftly make their way upwards. Occasionally, 
with shrill screams and impotent clutchlngs at the 
trunk, one falls, and the higher the fall, the more 
completely dead will he (or she, particularly she) 
be when he reaches the ground. She may lie, 
faintly twitching for a minute or two, while 
grimacing faces of friends peer down at her, but 
even before her twitchings have ceased they have 
turned to their businesses again, for no climber 
ever has a moment's rest, and a few ghouls crawl 
out from the bushes and bear away the corpse 
for Interment wrapped up in a winding sheet of 
the less respectable journals of the day. . . . 
Let us study the unnatural history of these 
curious brightly-coloured creatures a little more 
in detail. 

Dismissing the metaphor of the trees, we may 
say that at one time or another these climbers 
have come to London, like Dick Whittlngton. 
Possibly they may always have lived in London, 
taking London as a mere geographical expres- 
sion, but London, considered as a spiritual (or 
unspiritual) entity, has at one time or other in 
their lives dawned upon them as a shining and 
desirable thing, and they have said to themselves, 
gazing upwards, 'I want; I want' They have 
probably had more than the proverbial half- 

145 



CLIMBERS: 

crown in their pockets, for climbing is an ex- 
pensive job, with all the provisions and guides 
and ropes and axes necessary for Its accomplish- 
ment, and half-a-crown would not go very far. 
Unlike Dick Whittington, however, they have not 
brought their cat along with them, but they get 
their cat, so to speak, when they begin to climb. 
In other words, without metaphor, they hook on 
to somebody, a pianist, or a duchess, or a buf- 
foon, or an artist, or a cabinet-minister, or some- 
thing striking of some kind, and firmly clutch it. 
Eminence of any sort, whether of birth or of 
achievement, is naturally a useful aid in ascensions, 
while on the other hand the climber's half-crowns, 
or her flattery, or her dinners, or her country- 
house, perhaps even the climber herself, holds 
attractions for the particular piece of eminence 
she has put the hook into. It is her mascot, 
her latch-key, her passport — what you will — and 
she is wise to cling on to it for dear life. The 
mascot may not like it at first, he may wriggle 
and struggle, but on no account should she let go. 
Probably he gets accustomed to it quite soon, and 
does not mind being her electric light which she 
turns on when she chooses, and. Incidentally, pays 
for quite honestly. The two begin, in a way, to 
run each other, in most cases without scandal or 

146 



I. THE HORIZONTAL 

any cause for scandal, and, mutually sustained, 
soar upwards together. By means of her mascot 
she attracts his friends to her house, so that he 
knows that whenever he goes there he will find 
congenial spirits and an excellent dinner, while 
she, if she is clever (and no climbers, whether 
horizontals or perpendiculars, are without wits), 
finds herself gently wafted upwards. 

She will probably have begun her climb up 
the first few feet of the branchless trunk with 
the aid of ladders, friends and acquaintances 
(chiefly acquaintances) who have introduced her 
to one or two desirable folk, her mascot among 
them, and have enabled her to lay her slim pre- 
hensile hand on the lowest branches. At this 
point, having now a firm hold, so it seems to her, 
she will often kick her ladders down, perhaps not 
really intending to kick them, but in her spring 
upwards doing so almost accidentally. But if 
she does, she commits a great stupidity, and it 
is almost safe to bet that she will prove a hori- 
zontal. For it may easily prove that she will 
need those same ladders again a little higher up 
the trunk where there is a hiatus in branches, and 
returning for them will find them no longer 
there. They will not be lying prone on the ground 
as she probably thought (if she gave another 

147 



CLIMBERS: 

thought to them at all), but they will be some- 
where the other side of the tree, out of reach. 
She has to coax them back, and it is possible 
they will not come for her coaxing. And while 
she is pondering she may loose hold of her mas- 
cot, who will scramble away. In that case, she 
had better jump down at once, and begin (slightly 
soiled) all over again. 

To take a concrete instance, after this general 
introduction (as if, after reading a book about 
some curious and interesting animal we went to 
the Zoological Gardens to observe its appearance 
and habits), Mrs. Howard Britten furnishes a 
good example of the horizontal variety. Where 
the ' Howard ' came from nobody knew or cared; 
she just took it, and since no one else wanted it, 
nothing was said. She had married a genial 
solicitor, who from contact with the dusky secrets 
of the great, had acquired a liking for their 
sunlight, and did not in the least object to being 
put in his wife's knapsack. He made a very 
large income in his profession, and found that, 
though household expenses began to mount even 
quicker than his wife, the house in Brompton 
Square became considerably more amusing when 
the climbing began. He took no active part In it, 
but merely popped his head out of the knapsack 

148 




eSZUe^ : I; ^ 



/dn^w&u 



•CCS. 



I. THE HORIZONTAL 

and contentedly admired the enlarged view. Nor 
was he the least surprised when at the end of 
this particular season, his Molly persuaded him to 
move Mayfairwards, and purchase (the fact that 
it was a great bargain made Httle persuasion neces- 
sary) a house in Brook Street with a ball-room. 
Molly Howard-Britten (the hyphen appeared 
this summer) had chosen for her mascot a Mem- 
ber of Parliament who had lately entered the Ark 
of the Cabinet, and was uncomfortable at home 
because his wife had an outrageous stammer and 
an inordinate passion for wool-work. Mr. Har- 
binger was of course a Conservative, for to the 
climber that notorious body, the House of Lords, 
constitutes a considerable proportion of the top of 
the tree, and the House of Lords is generally 
supposed to be of the Tory creed. It was safer, 
therefore, as she looked forward to a good deal 
of their society, to have a Conservative mascot. 
She on her side offered a quick feminine wit to 
amuse him, a charming face and manner, and 
really admirable food. Mrs. Harbinger came 
once or twice, bringing her skeins with her, but 
since she disliked dinner-parties as much as she 
adored worsted, it soon became common for her 
husband to dine with the Howard-Brittens alone. 
The Howard-Brittens spent a week-end with the 
149 



CLIMBERS: 

Harbingers, and there Molly easily secured three 
or four of his friends to dine with her on the 
following Friday week. On this occasion one of 
them was going on to a very sumptuous tree-top 
ball afterwards, and during dinner she was rung 
up by the hostess who, agitated by the extreme 
inclemency of the night, begged her to bring a 
guest or two more along with her. This was 
luck: Molly went, and being a remarkably good 
dancer spent an evening that proved both agree- 
able and profitable. By the end of the season she 
had got well placed among the lower branches 
of the tree, and, perhaps a shade too soon, since 
It is not quite so easy to be a hostess as might be 
supposed, took the Brook Street house with the 
ball-room. 

She spent a rather sleepless August with her 
husband at Marienbad, and began to make her 
first mistakes. She gave picnics, and being in 
too great a hurry to secure a crowd, secured the 
crowd, but unfortunately it was the wrong one. 
She asked every one to come and see her when 
they got back to England, but those who came 
were not for the most part the singers in the 
top branches, but climbers like herself. This fact 
vaguely dawned on her, and she determined to 
rectify it when, with the assembling of Parlia- 

150 



I. THE HORIZONTAL 

ment in November, her mascot would be in town 
again. She did rectify it, and in the rectification 
made things much worse, for she gently dropped 
all the people she did not want, and made herself 
a quantity of enemies, not interesting, splendid 
enemies, whose attention it was an honour to 
attract, even though that attention wore a hostile 
aspect, but tiresome, stupid little enemies. Then 
a stroke of ill-luck, which was not at all her fault, 
befell her, for in January there was a general 
election, the Conservatives were turned out, and 
worse than that, Mr. Harbinger lost his seat. 
Her attempt to make her house a rallying-spot for 
the vanquished party signally failed. 

Then she made her second mistake. Politics 
having proved a broken reed, she adopted the 
dangerous device of pretending to be extremely 
intimate with her mascot, alluding to him as 
' Bertie,' and if the telephone bell rang excusing 
herself by saying that she must see what Bertie 
wanted. Had people believed in the intimacy 
of this relation, one of two things might have 
happened: she might either have made herself an 
object of interest, or (here was the danger), she 
might have had a fall. She had not at present 
climbed very high, so she would not have hurt 
herself fatally, but neither of these things hap- 

151 



CLIMBERS: 

pened. Nobody cared, any more than they cared 
about her having added Howard and the hyphen 
to her name. Thus an unprofitable spring passed, 
and, as a matter of fact, she was beginning to 
climb out along a horizontal branch. 

With May there came to town the noted 
Austrian pianist, Herr Grossesnoise. His fame 
had already preceded him from Vienna, and 
remembering that she had once seen him at 
Marienbad, Molly Howard-Britten wrote to him 
boldly and rather splendidly at the Ritz, re- 
minding him of their meeting (he had stepped 
on her toe and apologized with a magnificent 
hat-wave), and begging him to come and dine 
any day next week except Thursday, which she 
knew was the evening of his first concert. She 
wrote — and here her fatal horizontality came in 
— on paper with a coronet and another address 
on the top, hoping that she might strike some 
streak of snobbism. She had come by this paper 
quite honestly, having stayed in the house and 
having taken a sheet or two of the paper put 
on the writing-table of her bedroom, obviously 
for the use of guests. So now she used it, crossing 
out the address, and substituting for it 25 A Brook 
Street, Park Lane. A favourable answer came, 
addressed to the Highly Noble Lady Howard- 

152 



I. THE HORIZONTAL 

Britten (for he prided himself on his English), 
on which the Highly Noble scrawled a couple of 
dozen notes to musical friends and acquaintances 
(chiefly acquaintances), asking them to dine on 
the forthcoming fatal Friday, which was the day 
after Herr Grossesnoise's first recital, to meet the 
illustrious Austrian. 

So far all was prosperous and the climbing 
weather stood at ' set fair.' It is true that she 
had changed horses In mid-stream, for in inten- 
tion she definitely unharnessed poor Mr. Har- 
binger, and put the unsuspecting pianist in her 
shafts. But the fatal thing about changing 
horses in mid-stream is that the coachman usually 
puts in a worse horse, which Mrs. Howard- 
Britten had not done, since Mr. Harbinger could 
not at the present time be considered a horse at 
all. Already musical London was interested In 
the advent of her new mascot, for he had been 
well advertised, and of her twenty-four invita- 
tions, nineteen guests Instantly accepted, who with 
her husband and the Herr would cause ' covers 
to be laid,' as she was determined the fashionable 
papers should say, for twenty-two. Then she 
settled to have an evening party afterwards, and 
though on the couple of hundred Invitations 
which she sent out she did not definitely state that 

153 



CLIMBERS: 

Herr Grossesnoise was going to play, she wrote 
on the cards ' To meet Herr Grossesnoise.' But 
when you see a pianist's name on an ' At Home, 
10.30. R.S.V.P.' it is not unnatural to suppose 
that he is going to be a pianist in very deed. 
Among these two hundred she asked a fair 
sprinkling of people she wanted to know, but at 
present didn't, and had a Steinway Grand precari- 
ously hoisted through the window into her draw- 
ing-room and retuned on arrival. But in these 
arrangements her potential horizontality came out 
more glaringly than ever, for she took a middle 
course which no climber ever should. She was 
indefinite, she did not actually know whether Herr 
Grossesnoise would play or not. Either she 
ought to have engaged him to play at any fee 
within reason, if she meant (as she did mean), 
to make a real spring upwards to-night, or she 
should not have mentioned the fact that he was 
coming. As it was, every one supposed he would 
play, and since his recital the day before had 
roused a furore of enthusiasm in the press, almost 
all her two hundred evening-party invitations 
were accepted. A whole section of Brook Street 
was blocked with motor-cars, and several aspiring 
Americans who found it impossible to get to their 
hotel for the present looked in unasked until the 

154 



I. THE HORIZONTAL 

road was clear. But as Mrs. Howard-Britten 
knew no more than a high percentage of her 
guests by sight, the gratuitous honour thus done 
her passed undetected. 

The evening was a failure of so thorough 
a description as to be almost pathetic. Herr 
Grossesnoise played, but not the piano. He came 
up from the dining-room, slightly rosy with port 
and altogether inflated with his success, into the 
drawing-room, set with row upon row of small 
gilt chairs, and proceeded to do conjuring-tricks 
in a curious patois of German, French, and Eng- 
lish. He insisted on people taking cards from 
him, and on guessing the cards they had chosen, 
pressing them continually on his hostess and 
exclaiming, ' That is the Funf de piques, 
Lady Howard-Britten.' His colossal form and 
his iron ill permeated the room, while he 
insisted on doing trick after trick and pointedly 
addressing his hostess as iLady Howard-Britten, 
till she got almost to hate the sound of that de- 
sired prefix, while all the time the Steinway 
Grand yawned for him. More bitter than that 
was the facr that he asked Lady Howard-Britten 
to play a little slow music ('You play, hein, 
miladi?') while he did the most difficult of his 
tricks, and there the poor lady had to sit, when 

155 



CLIMBERS: 

it was he who should be sitting there, and try to 
remember ' White Wings they never grow 
whiskers,' or some other waltz of her youth. By 
degrees the growing fury of her guests generated 
that force of crowds which no individual can 
withstand, and In mass they rose and went down- 
stairs, so that by half-past eleven the rooms were 
empty but for the pianist and his host and hostess. 
Even then he would not desist, but went on with 
his ridiculous tricks till she could have cried with 
fatigue and thwarted ambition. 

But no climber sits down over a reverse even 
as crushing as this, and Mrs. Howard-Britten 
determined to wipe out her failure with a ball. 
She got hold of a good cotillion-leader, and gave 
him practically carte blanche as regards the 
presents, engaged her band, and issued a thousand 
Invitations. When the dancing was at its height 
there were precisely ten couples on the floor, 
and every one went home laden like a Christmas 
tree with expensive spoils. 

All that season she was absolutely indefatig- 
able : she tried charity, and engaged a fifty- 
guinea supper-table at Middlesex House for the 
evening party on behalf of Lighthouse keepers. 
She lent her ball-room for a conference on 
Roumanian folk-songs given by the idol of the 

156 



I. THE HORIZONTAL 

Mayfair drawing-rooms, and standing by the door 
as the audience arrived shook hands with as many 
of them as she could. She tried to be original, 
had a wigwam erected in the same room, and 
hired a troupe of Red Indians from the White 
City, who danced and made the most godless 
noises on outlandish instruments, but somehow 
the originality of the entertainment was swamped 
in its extreme tediousness. She tried to be con- 
ventional and took a box at the opera, where 
twice a week she and two or three perfectly un- 
known young men wondered who everybody 
was. She hired a yacht for the Cowes week and 
a depopulated grouse-moor in Sutherlandshire, 
but for all her exertions she only got a little fur- 
ther out on the horizontal branch of the tree 
she so longed to climb. Nothing happened: she 
made no mark and only spent money, which, after 
all, any one can do, if he is only fortunate enough 
to have it. 

She labours on, faint and rather older, but 
pursuing. She is always delighted if any one 
proposes himself to lunch or dinner, because, with 
the true climber's instinct, she always thinks it 
may lead to something. But it is to be feared 
that all it leads to is that slight drooping of the 
horizontal bough at the end, and not towards the 

157 



CLIMBERS: 

birds that sing among the topmost branches. She 
lacked something in her equipment which Nature 
had not given her, the flair for the people who 
matter, the knowledge of the precise ingredients 
in the successful bird-lime. . . . But her husband 
never regrets the Brook Street house with the 
ball-room. He plays Badminton in it by electric 
light on his return from his office. 



CLIMBERS: 

II. THE PERPENDICULAR 

CHAPTER NINE 



CHAPTER NINE 

CLIMBERS: 

II.THE PERPENDICULAR 

IF YOU ARE AN OBSERVANT PERSON 
addicted to washing your hands and face, you 
can hardly fail to have noticed the legend ' White- 
hand ' imprinted on your basin and soap-dish, 
and indeed on every sort of crockery. Probably, 
if you thought about it at all, you imagined that 
this was a trade-name, alluding to the effect of 
washing, but it is not really so at all. Mr. White- 
hand is the kind American gentleman who sup- 
plies so many of us with these articles of toilet, 
and as a consequence Mr. Whitehand is rich if 
not beyond the feverish dreams of avarice, at any 
rate, as rich as avarice can possibly desire to be 
in its waking moments. 

This fortunate gentleman began life as a boy 
who swept out a public lavatory in New York, 
and this accounts for his turning his attention 
to hardware. When he had made this colossal 
fortune he set about spending it, though he had 
no chance of spending it as quickly as it came in, 
and with a view to this bought a large chocolate- 
coloured house in Fifth Avenue, a cottage at New- 
port, an immense steam-yacht, a complete train 
in which to go on his journeys, and ordered a few 
i6i 



CLIMBERS: 

dozen of Raphael's pictures and some Gobelin 
tapestry. He was never quite certain whether 
Gobelin had painted the pictures and the firm 
of Raphael the tapestry, but that did not matter, 
since he had them both. He then expected his 
wife to get him into the very best New York 
society, and enter the charmed circle of the Four 
Hundred. She had been his typewriter, and in 
a fit of moral weakness, of which he had never 
repented, since she suited him extremely well, 
he had married her. But whether it was that the 
Four Hundred had seen too much of Mr. White- 
hand's name on their slop-basins, or whether he 
had not bought sufficient Raphaels, they one 
and all turned their ivory shoulders on him and 
his wife, and banged the door in their faces. As 
Mrs. Whitehand had just as keen a desire to 
shine among the stars of the amazing city as her 
husband, she was naturally much annoyed at her 
inability to climb into the firmament, the more 
so because she was convinced that with practice 
she could become a first-rate climber. She had 
the indomitable will and the absolute Impervious- 
ness to rebuffs that are the birthright of 
that agile race, and felt the inward sense of her 
royalty in this respect, as might some Princess 
over whom a wizard had cast a spell. But some- 

162 



II. THE PERPENDICULAR 

how, here in New York, she got no practice 
in chmbing, because she could make no beginning 
whatever. She could only stand on tiptoe, which 
is a very different matter. And when at the end 
of her second year of standing on tiptoe, Nittie 
Vandercrump, the acknowledged queen of New- 
port, cut her dead for the seventeenth time, and 
with her famous scream asked her friend, Nancy 
Costersnatch, who all those strange faces be- 
longed to, Mrs. Whitehand began to think that 
New York was impregnable by direct assault. 
But in the manner of Benjamin Disraeli, she 
vowed that some day she would attract attention 
in that assembly, and with Nittie Vandercrump's 
scream ringing in her ears, sat down to think. 

Well, there were other places in the world 
besides New York, places where there grew social 
trees of far greater antiquity and magnificence, 
and she settled to climb the London tree. But 
she felt that she would get on better there at first 
without her husband. He was rather too fond 
of telling people what he paid for his Raphaels 
and how fast his special train went. When she 
had climbed right up among the topmost branches, 
she would send for him, and let a rope down to 
him, and he might quote as many prices as he 
chose, but she felt with the unerring instinct of 

163 



CLIMBERS: 

a born climber that he would be In the way at 
first, even as he had been in New York. She 
talked it over quite amicably with him that night, 
while the still air vibrated with the sound of the 
band next door and the screams of Nittie, and he 
cordially consented to the experiment. Money 
ad libitum was to be hers, and it was to be her 
business to get somewhere where the screams of 
Nittie would be no more to them than the cries 
of the milkman in the street. He, meantime, 
was to amuse himself with the special train and 
the Gobelin tapestry and the steam-yacht, and 
make himself as comfortable as he could, while 
his wife made this broad outflanking movement 
on New York. 

So one May afternoon Sarah Whitehand, with 
twenty-two trunks and a couple of maids and her 
own indomitable will, arrived at the Ritz Hotel 
in Piccadilly, and set about her business. She 
dined alone In the restaurant, read the small para- 
graphs in the evening paper, and ordered a box 
at the opera. She was an Insignificant little per- 
sonage in the way of physical advantages, being 
short, and having a face which owned no par- 
ticular features. She had. It Is true, two eyes, a 
nose and a mouth, for the absence of any of them 
would have made her conspicuous, which she was 

164 




^^Wt<a0 4 "^ *&^P-»'»^4iU*^ 



i^bA. 



II. THE PERPENDICULAR 

not, but there was nothing to be said about them. 
They were just there : two of them greenish, one 
of them shghtly turned up, while the other was 
but a hole in her face. She was not ugly any 
more than she was pretty; she was merely nothing 
at all; you did not look twice at her. But if you 
had, it might have struck you that there was 
something uncommonly shrewd about the insig- 
nificant objects which supplied the place of fea- 
tures. Also, when she was determined to do 
anything, you would have seen that she had a 
chin. 

But to-night this face of common objects rose 
out of the most wonderful gown in shades of 
orange that was ever seen. It was crowned too 
in a winking splendour of diamonds that shouted 
and sang in her sandy-coloured hair, and round 
her neck were half-a-dozen rows of marvellous 
pearls. While the curtain was up she sat close 
to the front of her box with her eyes undeviatingly 
fixed on the stage, and when the curtain fell she 
stood there a minute more, so that the whole 
house should get a good view of her. She did not 
look about her; she merely stood there, seem- 
ingly unconscious of the opera-glasses that were 
turned on her from all quarters of the house. 
All round, everybody was asking everybody else 

165 



CLIMBERS: 

who the woman with the diamond Crystal Palace 
was, and nobody knew. Nor did anybody know, 
not even Mrs. Isaacs, the fashionable clair- 
voyante, who exposed a considerable portion of 
her ample form in the stalls, that through the 
mists of the horizon there faintly shone to-night 
the star of surpassing magnitude that was to 
climb to the very zenith, and burn there in un- 
winking splendour. 

For the next week Sarah took no direct step 
forward, but sat in the Ritz Hotel, or in her box 
at the opera, or drove about on shopping errands. 
Among these latter must be included a quantity 
of visits to house-agents, who had in their hands 
the letting of furnished houses in such localities 
as Grosvenor Square and Brook Street, and 
what seemed to interest her more than the houses 
themselves was the question of who was wishing 
to let them. But she was in no hurry: she was 
perfectly well aware that the first steps were of 
the utmost importance, and before she stepped at 
all, she wanted to find the largest and strongest 
stepping-stone available. The evening usually 
found her alone in her opera-box, seemingly ab- 
sorbed in the presentation of Russian ballet, and 
unconscious of the opera-glasses levelled at her. 
She gave the opera-glasses something to look at 

i66 



II. THE PERPENDICULAR 

too, for she never appeared twice In the same 
gown, but in a series of last cries, most stimulat- 
ing to the observer. One night she wore a sort 
of bonnet of ospreys on her head, and again every- 
body asked everybody else who the Cherokee 
Indian was. But again nobody knew, and so they 
all supposed that the ospreys were made of cel- 
luloid. But they had an uncomfortable idea that 
they might be genuine. But If so, who's were 
they? London began to be genuinely Intrigued. 
After about a week of this, she suddenly 
lighted upon exactly what she had been looking 
for in the books of the house-agents. A certain 
new big house in Grosvenor Street, which ex- 
ternally recalled a fortress made of stout sand- 
bags was to be let by Lord Newgate (marquis 
of) , the eldest son of the Duke of Bailey. Sarah 
had already seen Lady Newgate, a tall, floating 
dream of blue eyes, golden hair and child-like 
mouth, at the opera, and knew her and her hus- 
band to be among the true white nightingales 
who sing and play poker at the very top of the 
tree she was pining to chmb. A less Napoleonic 
climber than she might have thought that to take 
the Newgates' house was a passport to London, 
but she knew that It would only carry its cachet 
among the people who could not really be of any 

167 



CLIMBERS: 

use to her, namely, that well-dressed esurient gang 
of Londoners who find it quite sufficient to be fed 
and amused at other people's expense. Sensible 
woman that she was, she fully intended to feed 
and amuse them, but it was not they that she was 
out for : at the best they were like the stage army 
which marches in at one door and out at another, 
and in and out again. They were not the princi- 
pals. You were, of course, surrounded by people 
whom you fed and amused, if you were on the 
climb, just as you were surrounded by footmen 
and motor-cars, but she looked much further than 
this. She argued, again correctly, that if such 
conspicuously melodious songsters as the New- 
gates wanted to let their house during the very 
months when they would naturally be needing it 
most, they must be in considerable want of money, 
and would be likely to give some valuable equiva- 
lent for it. So, seeing her scheme complete from 
end to end, as far as the taking of this house 
was concerned, she told the slightly astonished 
agent that she was willing to take the house for 
the next three months or the next six at the price 
named, but that she wished to make her arrange- 
ments with Lady Newgate herself. The agent, 
seeing that she was just a wild American, politely 
represented to her that this was not the usual 

i68 



II. THE PERPENDICULAR 

method of doing such business in civilized places, 
but she remained adamant. 

* If I don't settle it up with the Marchioness 
of Newgate,' she said, ' I won't settle it up with 
anybody else. Kindly give that message over 
your 'phone, please, to the Marchioness, and say 
that if she feels disposed to entertain my pro- 
posals, I shall be very happy to see her at the 
Ritz Hotel this afternoon. And if she don't care 
to come, why, I don't care to take her old house. 
That's all. You may say that my name is Mrs. 
Whitehand, and that my husband's the head of 
the firm, which she maybe has heard of.' 

Now simple as this procedure appeared, it had 
the simplicity of genius about it, not the sim- 
plicity of the fool. As far as houses went, she 
did not care whether she had Lady Newgate's 
house or a house in Newgate. What she was 
going for was Lady Newgate. It was possible, 
of course, that on receiving this message. Lady 
Newgate would simply say, * What on earth does 
she want to see me for? She can settle it through 
the agent.' If that was the case, it was not likely 
that Lady Newgate would be any good to her. 
But it was quite possible that Lady Newgate 
might say, ' Hullo : here is the Mrs. Whitehand 
going about looking for a house, and probably 
169 



CLIMBERS: 

unchaperoned.' Anyhow there was a chance of 
this, and since Sarah Whitehand had nothing to 
lose, she took it. For there might be something 
to gain, and these are the best chances to take. 

Now the price asked for this fortress of marble 
and cedar-wood was an extremely high one, and 
the Newgates would have been perfectly willing 
to take about half of the sum named, after a little 
genteel and lofty bargaining. Consequently the 
prospect of immediately obtaining the full price, 
not for three months only, but for six, including 
August and September, when an aged caretaker 
usually had it for nothing, was irresistibly at- 
tractive. Toby Newgate, it is true, momentarily 
demurred against his wife's waiting upon the 
peremptory Yankee at the Ritz, but she had seen 
much further than him with her forget-me-not 
coloured eyes. She had seen in fact just as far 
as Mrs. Whitehand. 

' My dear, it's flying in the face of Providence 
to neglect such a chance,' she said, ' and if she'd 
told me to wait at the bottle entrance of the Ele- 
phant and Castle I should have gone.' 

He shuflied about the room a little. 

* Don't like your being whistled to by the wife 
of the manufacturer of hardware, just for six 
months' rent,' he said. 

170 



II. THE PERPENDICULAR 

She laughed. 

' My dear Toby, it Isn't only six months' rent 
that's at stake/ she said. ' I'm not going to be 
landlady only, I expect, but godmother.' 

'Godmother?' 

* Yes, dear, and you godfather to Mr. Hard- 
ware, if he is here. But you needn't buy any 
presents. Good American godchildren give the 
presents themselves.' 

Toby had some vague sense of her position, she 
only the necessity of his poverty. 

' You mean you're going to trot them round? ' 
he asked. 

' Yes, if possible. I think her message means 
that. Why else should she want to see me, or 
take the house for August and September? It's 
a bribe, a hint, a signal.' 

The interview between the two ladles was ex- 
tremely satisfactory, as is usually the case when 
there is no nonsense about the conversationalists, 
and each of them is willing and even eager to give 
exactly what the other wants. The business of 
the house was very soon relegated to a firm of 
solicitors, and the godmotherly aspect began to 
show through the form of the landlady, as in some 
cunning transformation scene, faintly at first but 
with increasing distinctness, 
171 



CLIMBERS: 

* Your first visit to London?' asked Madge 
Newgate. 

*Yes: I've been here but a week, and have 
done nothing but hunt round for a house and go 
to the opera.' 

Instantly Lady Newgate remembered the 
solitary and dazzling figure in the box. She, too, 
had wondered who the woman in orange and dia- 
monds was. Mrs. Whitehand's face had made no 
impression whatever on her. 

' Ah, then I am sure I saw you there,' she said. 
' We were all wondering who you were. You 
must allow me to put some of my friends out of 
their suspense by letting them know.' 

Mrs. Whitehand laughed. 

* I should be very pleased for your friends not 
to strain themselves,' she remarked. ' And I'm 
in suspense too, as to who your friends are. I 
don't know a soul in London.' 

This was rather a relief to Madge Newgate. 
Sometimes a perfectly impossible tail was at- 
tached to these strange Americans, and you had 
to encounter the riff-raff of the Western world 
en masse. She laid her hand on the other's knee. 

* My dear, you must get some friends at once,' 
she said. ' You might dine with us to-night, will 
you? I have two or three people coming.' 

172 



II. THE PERPENDICULAR 

This was quite sufficient. Mrs. Whitehand 
spoke shortly and to the point. 

' I want to be run/ she said. 

Madge Newgate was a perfectly honest woman, 
and now that all ambiguity had been cleared 
away, she explained what she could do and what 
she would expect to receive. She could give Mrs. 
Whitehand the opportunity of meeting practically 
any one she wished, and she could repeat and 
again repeat that opportunity. She could bring 
people to Mrs. Whitehand's house, and within 
limits get them to invite her to theirs. But more 
than that, she frankly admitted she could not do. 

' I can't make them your friends,' she said. ' I 
can only make them your acquaintances. The 
other depends on you. You must show yourself 
useful or charming or striking in some way, if 
you want more than just to go to balls and dinner- 
parties. Luckily in London we are very hungry, 
so that you can always feed people, and very poor, 
so that you can always tip people, and very dull, 
so that you can always amuse people.' 

* I see: I quite see that,' said Mrs. Whitehand. 

Madge felt that she understood: that it was 
worth while explaining. 

' I'm sure you will forgive my plain speaking,' 
she said, ' but it is never any use being vague. 

173 



CLIMBERS: 

And there's a lot of luck about it. Sometimes a 
very stupid woman " arrives '' and a very clever 
agreeable one doesn't, and the Lord knows why. 
I should be quite American do you know, if I 
were you; Americans are taking well just now. 
About — well, why should I beat about the bush? 
— about what I am to receive for my trouble. I 
imagine you don't want my house in the least for 
the three months after July, and I am willing to 
take a good deal of trouble for your renting it 
then. And when some more rent is due, I think 
I had better tell you, hadn't I ? I am not greedy, 
I am only very poor.' 

Now no climber could possibly have made a 
better beginning than this. Sarah Whitehand 
could not have chosen a more admirable god- 
mother, and though she was lucky in having hit 
on precisely the right one, she had shown true 
perpendicularity in having gone to the right class. 
She had aimed at the best and hit it, and in the 
three months that followed she continued to show 
a discretion that bore out the early promise of 
her talents. She neither gave herself airs, nor 
was she grovellingly humble, she merely enjoyed 
herself enormously, and since of all social gifts 
that is the most popular, she rapidly mounted. 
She threw herself, with Lady Newgate's sanction, 

174 



II. THE PERPENDICULAR 

Into artistic circles, and firmly annexed as her 
mascot the chief dancer of the Russian ballet. 
Unlike poor horizontal Mrs. Howard-Britten, 
with her disappointing Herr Grossesnoise, she 
made it quite clear that when she asked a party 
to meet a bevy of Russian dancers that party was 
surely going to see the bevy dance, which it did 
quite delightfully under the stimulus of enormous 
fees. She did not waste her quails and champagne 
on unremunerative guests, or guests who so far 
from helping her would only hinder her, but fol- 
lowed Lady Newgate's directions precisely as to 
whom she should ask, and very good directions 
they were. 

She had other modes of access as well. She 
flattered grossly or delicately as the occasion de- 
manded. When she saw that some one liked to 
be drenched In flattery she had bucketsful of it 
ready. At other times she confined herself to 
telling So-and-so's friends how lovely So-and-so 
was looking, or how brlUIant So-and-so was. 
This method she chiefly adopted to those of Lady 
Newgate's friends who had somewhat unwillingly 
come to her house, and plentiful applications of 
these gratifying assurances usually had their effect 
sooner or later, for Sarah Whitehand knew that 
nobody Is insensible to flattery, if (and here lay 

175 



CLIMBERS: 

the virtue) the proper brand properly admin- 
istered was supplied. Sometimes the case re- 
quired study: it was no use conveying to a beau- 
tiful woman the flattery of acknowledging her 
beauty: you had to find out something on which 
she secretly prided herself, her tact or her want 
of tact, her charming manners or her absence of 
manners, her toes or her teeth, and make little 
hypodermic injections in the right place. Then 
again there were people who in spite of all allure- 
ments would have nothing to do with her. After 
two or three unsuccessful direct assaults, she 
would attempt that no more, but, just as she was 
outflanking New York by laying siege to London, 
outflank those obdurate folk by laying siege to 
their friends. She was infinitely patient over 
these operations, and nibbled her way round 
them, until they were cut off, and found them- 
selves devoid of all friends save such as were 
friends of the accomplished Sarah. By patience, 
by good humour and by her own enjoyment she 
moved steadily and rapidly upwards on branches 
that she gilded beforehand. She often thought 
about Nittie Vandercrump screaming away in 
New York, and even adopted a modified version 
of her yells of pleasure. These she gave vent to 
when dull people, who for some reason mattered, 

176 



II. THE PERPENDICULAR 

told her long stupid stories, and found that they 
had achieved, for the first time in their lives, a 
brilliant and startling success. 

Naturally she made quantities of mistakes. 
Occasionally a man at her table would find in 
his neighbour a woman with whom he had not 
been on speaking terms for years, or again, she 
solemnly introduced Bob Crawley to the wife he 
had divorced a year before, and immediately 
afterwards to the woman concerning whom his 
wife might have divorced him the year before 
that. Nor could she at first grasp the fact that 
a Duchess perhaps did not matter at all, and that 
Mrs. Smith mattered very much, and she had to 
drop the Duchess and smooth down Mrs. Smith. 
But these were mere chihsh stumbles, and having 
picked herself up she again clung tightly with one 
hand to her godmother and with the other to her 
mascot, the Russian dancer. 

And all the time while she was so nimbly climb- 
ing, she and Petropopoloffski were sitting on a 
great egg which was to be hatched In the autumn, 
when London would be full again for the session. 
Russian ballet this year was the rage to the ex- 
clusion of all other rages, and the great egg was 
no less than a further six-weeks season of it, 
financed and engineered by Sarah. Not until 
177 



CLIMBERS: 

when late in July the egg was, so to speak, an- 
nounced, did any one, even her godmother, know 
that it was she who had laid it, and she who had 
Petropopoloffski in her pocket, and she who had 
taken the Duke of Kent's theatre for it, and she 
who had arranged to have the dress-circle and pit 
taken away and rows of boxes substituted, and 
she, finally, who had taken thirty-seven boxes her- 
self, so that only through her favour could any- 
body engage them. It was a great, a brilliant 
stroke, hazardous perhaps, but then everybody 
wanted to see Russian ballet so much that they 
would not stick at being indebted to her for their 
boxes. But it came off: within a couple of days 
of the subscription list being opened, all boxes 
not reserved by her had been let, and she began 
most cordially to allow applicants to have some 
of hers. Very wisely, she gratified no private 
slights by refusing them, she only made friends 
by granting them. She kept just two or three of 
the best, in case of emergencies. 

And so she goes on from height to height. 
Mr. Whitehand was duly sent for in the succeed- 
ing spring, and sat entranced for a month, as in 
a dream of content, in this Valhalla of the gods. 
But he found he could not stand much of the 
rarefied air at a time, and so bought a large place 

178 



I 



II. THE PERPENDICULAR 

in the country, where in leather gaiters he feels 
like an English squire, and has revolutionized 
all the sanitary arrangements of the house. And 
when Nittie came to London, as she did during 
the summer, and screamed a welcome to her dar- 
ling Sally, her darling Sally was very wise about 
it, and instead of kicking her down, which she 
might easily have done, she gave her a leg-up 
by asking her to a particularly dazzling dinner- 
party and being quite kitid to her. She does not 
see much of her, but always treats her with the 
respect and pity due to a poor relation. There 
is no more climbing to be done here, and for a 
change next autumn she means to go downstairs 
to New York and see how they are all getting on 
in the kitchen. 



THE SPIRITUAL 

PASTOR 
CHAPTER TEN 



CHAPTER TEN 

THE SPIRITUAL 

PASTOR 

ST. SEBASTIAN'S CHURCH, SITUATED 

in the centre of Mayfair, is justly famous for the 
beauty of its structure, the excellence of its sing- 
ing, the splendour of its vestments and the mag- 
nificence of its vicar, Mr. Sandow, who might 
well be taken, as far as superb physical propor- 
tions go, to be the show-pupil of his hardly less 
illustrious namesake. He is * Hon.' and ' Rev.,' 
but he prefers his letters to be addressed to him 
as ' The Rev. the Hon. J. S. Sandow ' instead of 

* The Hon. the Rev.,' for, as he says, the ' Hon.' 
is an accident — not, of course, implying that there 
was any irregularity about his birth — and that 

* the Rev.' is the more purposeful of his prefixes. 
To do him justice, he lives up to this fine pro- 
nouncement, and while, if his brother, Lord Shet- 
land, lunches with him he is regaled with the 
simplest of family meals, he entertains an athletic 
Bishop who is a friend of his with the sumptuous- 
ness due from a Rev. to a Prince of the Church, 
and takes him down in a motor to Queen's Club, 
where they have a delightful game of racquets 
together. 

His ecclesiastical politics, as exhibited in the 

183 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

services at St. Sebastian's, are distinctly High. 
But they are also Broad, since for those of his 
parishioners who prefer it, there is an early 
celebration at 8 A.M. conducted by two of his 
curates. Matins, sung in plain-song by an ad- 
mirable choir, follows at lo A.M., and this is 
usually attended by a packed congregation. By 
eleven, in any case, which is the hour for the 
sermon, there is not a seat to be had in the 
church, for Mr. Sandow invariably preaches him- 
self, and from Pimlico and the wilds of South 
Kensington, from Bayswater and Regent's Park, 
eager listeners flock to hear him. This is no 
quarter of an hour's oration: he seldom preaches 
less than fifty minutes, and often the large Louis 
Seize clock below the organ loft, with its dis- 
creetly nude bronze figures of Apollo and Daphne 
in the vale of Tempe sprawHng over it, chimes 
noon on its musical bells before he has finished. 
A short pause succeeds the conclusion of the ser- 
mon, and the choir enters the church again from 
the vestry in magnificent procession and panoply 
of banners, followed by the clergy in full vest- 
ments. Clouds of the most expensive incense 
befog the chancel, and If what is enacted there 
is not the Mass, it is an uncommonly good imi- 
tation of It, 

184 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

Mr. Sandow's ecclesiastical doctrines thus 
preach themselves, so to speak, in the manner 
of this service, and there is little directly doc- 
trinal in his sermons. He ranges the religions 
of the world, culling flowers from Buddhism, 
Mohammedanism, Fire Worship, Christian 
Science, and has even been known to find some- 
thing totemistic, if not positively sacramental, in 
the practice of cannibalism. The first part of 
these sermons is always extremely erudite, and 
out of his erudition there springs a sort of sunlit 
Pantheism. He splits no hairs over it, and does 
not insist on any definitely limited meaning being 
attached to the word ' Immanent ' ; it satisfies him 
to prove the pervasiveness of Deity. At other 
times, instead of rearing his creed as this sub- 
structure of world-religion, he mines Into the 
sciences and gives his congregation delightful 
glimpses into the elements of astronomy, with 
amazing figures as to the distance of the fixed 
stars. Or he Investigates botany, and Aqullegia 
rolls off his tongue as sonorously as Aldebaran. 
Out of the arts as well, from music, painting, 
sculpture he delves his gold, that gold which he 
finds so freely distributed throughout the entire 
universe. Having got it, he becomes the gold- 
smith, and shows his listeners how to turn their 

i8s 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

lives into wondrous images of pure gold, the gold 
of the complete consciousness that there is noth- 
ing in this world common or unclean, or less than 
Divine. He snaps his fingers in the face of Satan, 
and tells him, as if he was a mere Mrs. Harris, 
that there is no ' sich a person.' All is divine, 
and therefore we must set about our businesses 
with joy and exultation. Not only will sorrow 
and sighing flee away, but they actually have fled 
away: it is impossible that they should have a 
place in the world such as he has already proved 
the existence of by the aid of botany or music 
or cannibalism. Indeed if it were possible to 
conceive the existence of sin, we should, we could 
only expect to find it where, by reason of people 
not realizing the splendour of those realities, they 
allow themselves to be depressed or gloomy. 
And (since the Louis Seize clock has already 
chimed) Now. 

There is no doubt that this robust joyousness 
suits his congregation very well, for the most of 
the inhabitants of his parish, the owners of nice 
houses in Curzon Street and Park Lane and other 
comfortably-situated homes, have really a great 
deal to be jolly about, and Mr. Sandow points 
out their causes for thankfulness in patches so 
purple that they almost explode with richness of 

i86 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

colour. Another great theme of his, when for 
a Sunday or two he has made his hearers feel 
how lucky all mankind is to be born into this 
glorious world, is the duty of kindliness and 
simplicity. Indeed his collected sermons rather 
resemble the collected works of Ouida, who could 
write so charmingly about pairs of little wooden 
shoes, and with the same pen, make us swoon with 
the splendours of Russian princesses, and the 
gorgeousness of young guardsmen with their 
plumes of sunny hair, and their parties at the Star 
and Garter hotel where they throw the half- 
guinea peaches at the fireflies.* If joy is the 
violins in this perfect orchestra of a world, sim- 
plicity and kindliness are, according to Mr. San- 
dow, the horns and the trombones. Crowned 
heads are of no account to him if accom- 
panied by cold hearts, but he has found 
(greatly to their credit) that the inhabitants of 
splendid houses, and the owners of broad acres 
are among the simplest and kindliest of mankind, 
and he often takes an opportunity to tell them 
so, ex cathedra, from his pulpit. And since It is 
impossible not to be gratified In hearing a pro- 
fessional testimonial, publicly delivered, to your 
merits, his unbounded popularity with his con- 

*A fact. 
187 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

gregatlon is amply accounted for, and the offer- 
tories at St. Sebastian's rain on him, as on some 
great male Danae, showers of gold. 

At the convenient hour of six, so that devo- 
tional exercises should not interfere with tea or 
dinner, Vespers are celebrated with extreme 
magnificence. The church blazes with lights, 
which shine out through clouds of incense, and 
the air is sonorous with the splendour and shout 
of plain-song. And at eleven (evening dress 
optional) is sung Compline. Here Mr. Sandow 
makes a wise concession to the more Anglican 
section of his flock, and the psalms are sung to 
rich chants by Stainer and Havergal and the 
Rev. P. Henley, while the hymn is some popular 
favourite out of the Ancient and Modern book. 
Though evening dress is optional, and no beggar 
in rags, should such ever present himself, would 
be turned away, evening dress is the more gen- 
eral, for many people drop in on their way home 
from dinner, and the street is a perfect queue of 
motor-cars, as if a smart evening-party was going 
on. And then you shall see rows of brilliant 
dames in gorgeous gowns and tiaras, singing 
lustily, and young men and maidens and solid 
substantial fathers all in a row, with their fat 
chins rising and falling as they rumble away at 

i88 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

Rev. P. Henley in their throats. For certainly 
Mr. Sandow has succeeded in making religion, 
or at any rate attendance at Sunday services, 
fashionable in his parish: it Is the Thing to go 
to church, though whether like other fashions, 
such as diabolo or jig-saw puzzles, It is a tem- 
porary enthusiasm remains to be seen. 

On week-days the devotional needs of his con- 
gregation are not so sumptuously attended to, for 
Mr. Sandow, certainly as wise as most children 
of light, is aware that his flock are very busy 
people, and does not care to risk the Institution 
of a failure. Besides he has very strong notions 
of the duty of every man and woman to do their 
work In the world, even if, apparently, their work 
chiefly consists In the passionate pursuit of pleas- 
ure. But he likes splendour (as well as sim- 
plicity) In those advantageously situated, just as 
he likes splendour in his Sunday services. He Is, 
too, himself, a very busy man, for since he makes 
it his duty to know his flock individually, and 
since his flock are that sort of sheep which gives 
luncheon and dinner-parties and balls In great 
profusion. It follows that he has a great many 
invitations to these festivities, and accepts as many 
as he can possibly manage. But he always prac- 
tises the observance of fasts, and never eats meat 
189 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

on Fridays. To make meagre on Fridays and 
vigils therefore has become rather fashionable 
also, and since most of his entertainers have ex- 
cellent chefs, Friday, though a meatless day, is 
an extremely well-fed one, for with salmon trout 
and caviare, and a dish of asparagus and 
some truffles, and an ice pudding and some souffle 
of cheese, you can make a very decent pretence 
of lunching, especially if particularly good wines 
flow fast as a compensation for this ecclesiastical 
abstinence. It is a pastime for hostesses also to 
exercise the ingenuity of their chefs In producing 
dishes, strictly vegetarian, in which a subtle com- 
bination of herbs and condiments produces a 
meaty flavour, and to observe Mr. Sandow's face 
when he thinks he tastes veal. But he is formally 
assured that no four-legged or two-legged animal 
has as much as walked into the stew-pot, and in 
consequence, with many compliments, he asks for 
a second helping. 

All this endears Mr. Sandow to his people; 
they say, * He Is so very human and not the least 
like a clergyman.' He would not be pleased with 
this expression if it came to his ears, though if 
he was told he was not in the least like most 
other clergymen there would be no complaint. 
For he thinks that the office of a priest is to enter 

190 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

into the joys and pleasures of those he ministers 
to, not only to exact their attendance at church, 
and, as he modestly says of himself, ' bore them 
stiff ' with his interminable sermons, and who 
shall say he is wrong? Indeed to see him at a 
ball, it is more the other guests that enter into 
his pleasures than he into theirs, for he is one 
of the best dancers that ever stepped, and there 
is a queue of ladies, as at the booking-office of 
Victoria Station on a Bank Holiday, waiting to 
have a turn with the Terpsichorean vicar. But, 
like some modified Cinderella, he keeps early 
hours, and vanishes on the stroke of one, in order 
to be up In good time in the morning, and at his 
work. For in addition to all his parties, his inter- 
views, his dances, his Sunday services, his games 
of racquets, he has a further life of his own, 
being a voluminous and widely-read author. 

This literary profession of his is no mere matter 
of a parish-magazine, or of letters to the Guardian 
about the Eastward position, or the Spectator 
about early buttercups, but he publishes on his 
own account at least two volumes every year. 
Usually those take the form of essays, written 
in the second or pair-of-wooden-shoes manner, 
and probably each of them contains a greater 
number of true and edifying reflections than have 

191 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

ever before appeared between the covers of a 
single volume. It is no disparagement of them 
to say that they seem to go on for ever, for so 
do the waters of a spring, except in times of 
such severe drought as is unknown to the pen of 
this ready writer. They all begin in an enticing 
manner, for Mr. Sandow tells you how he was 
walking across the Park one morning, when he 
observed two sparrows quarrelling over a piece 
of bread that some kind bystander had thrown 
them. This naturally gives rise to reflections as 
to the distressing manner in which ill-temper 
spoils our day. The kind bystander is, of course, 
Providence, who throws quantities of bread, and 
Mr. Sandow tells us that it is the truer wisdom 
not to behave like silly sparrows and all wrangle 
over one piece, but hop cheerfully away, with a 
blessing, in the certainty of finding plenty more. 
Or again Mr. Sandow describes how he was 
hurrying to the station to catch a train, fussing 
himself with the thought that he would not be 
in time for it, and not noticing the limpid blue 
of the sky and the white clouds that floated across 
it. When he came to the station he found he 
had still five minutes to spare and so need not 
have hurried at all, but drunk in the gladness of 
God's spring. From this lesson, he humbly hopes, 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

he will be less disposed to fuss in the future, but 
trust to the wise hand that guides him. We are 
not told what would have been the moral if Mr. 
Sandow had missed his train, but then, after all 
he did not write about that, and one can only 
conjecture that it would have been a lesson to 
him as to how to wait patiently (picking up edi- 
fying crumbs at the station) for the next train. 
Or he sees a house in process of being pulled 
down, with gaping wall showing the internal 
decoration, and tenderly wonders what sweet pri- 
vate converse took place In front of the denuded 
fire-place. His vivid Imagination pictures charm- 
ing scenes: on one wall on the third story was 
a paper with repeated images of Jack and Jill 
and Red Riding Hood and Little Miss Muffit, 
and he conjectures that here was the nursery, 
and the paper looked down on children at play. 
But the children are grown up now; they have 
outlived their nursery, as we all do, but Instead 
of regretting days that are no more we must go 
on from strength to strength, till we reach the 
Imperishable house of many mansions which no- 
body will ever pull down. At the end of each 
of these musings written In the palr-of-wooden- 
shoes mode comes a passage of this kind In the 
second manner, a sudden purple patch about im- 

193 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

perishable houses, or the towers of Beulah, or 
the dawning of the everlasting day. 

It is just possible that this skeleton-analysis of 
Mr. Sandow's works may faintly produce the im- 
pression that there is something a shade common- 
place about them, that they lack the clarion of 
romance, of excitement, of distinction in thought, 
or whatever it is that we look for when we read 
books. And it is idle to deny that this impression 
is ill-founded: no flash of blinding revelation ever 
surprises the reader, nor does he ever feel that 
the perusal of them has added a new element to 
or presented a fresh aspect of life ; only that here, 
gracefully expressed, is precisely what he had al- 
ways thought. This probably is the secret of their 
amazing popularity, for there is nothing more 
pleasing than to find oneself in complete harmony 
with one's author. Anybody might have written 
them, provided only he had a fluent pen and an 
edifying mind. Mr. Sandow never gave one of 
his readers, even the most squeamish and sensi- 
tive, the smallest sense of discomfort or anxiety. 
He flows pleasantly along, faintly stimulating, 
and though he suggests no soul-questionings that 
could possibly keep anybody awake o' nights, a 
very large number of the public are delighted to 
read a little more in the morning. For Mn 

194 



THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR 

Sandow never fails you; his fund of mild and 
pleasant reflection is absolutely unending, and if 
from a mental point of view the study of his 
works is rather like eating jam from a spoon, 
you can at least be certain that you will never bite 
on a stone and jar your teeth. And if you do 
not by way of intellectual provender like eating 
jam, why, you need not read Mr. Sandow's books, 
but those of somebody else. 



'SING FOR YOUR 

DINNER' 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 



CHAPTER ELEVEN 

'SING FOR YOUR 

DINNER' 

THAT AMIABLE LITTLE FOWL, THE 
Piping Bullfinch, has very pretty manners. If he 
is a well-bred bird, as most Piping Bullfinches are 
(though they come from Germany) , he will, when 
he sees you approach his cage, put his head on 
one side, make two or three polite little bows, 
and whistle to you with very melodious and tune- 
ful flutings. But it is not entirely his love of 
melody that inspires him, for he is rather greedy 
also (though he comes from Germany), and per- 
haps the politeness of his bows and the tunes that 
he so pleasantly pipes, would be considerably cur- 
tailed if he found that he was not generally given, 
as a reward for his courtesy, something equally 
pleasant to eat. But if he feels that you are will- 
ing to supply him with the morsels in which his 
rather Hmited soul delights, he will continue to 
bow and pipe to you until he is stuffed. And, 
as soon as ever his appetite begins to assert itself 
again (and he is a remarkably steady feeder), 
he will resume his bows and his tunes. 

Quite a large class of people, the numerical 
majority of which consists of youngish men, may 
be most aptly described as Singers for their 
199 



«SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

Dinner or Piping Bullfinches. Girls and young 
women are not of so numerous a company, for if 
unmarried they have generally some sort of home 
where they are given their dinners, without sing- 
ing for them, or if married are occupied in their 
duties as providers to their husbands. But there 
is a large quantity of young or youngish unmar- 
ried men who, living in bachelor chambers or 
flats, find it both more economical and pleasanter 
to sing for their dinner than to eat it less sociably 
at their own expense at their clubs or to entertain 
others, and they are therefore prepared to make 
themselves extremely agreeable for the price of 
their food. The bargain is not really very one- 
sided; indeed, as bargains go it is a very tolerably 
fair one; for there are great handfuls of people 
who, either from a natural dislike of old friends or 
for lack of them, are constantly delighted to see 
a Piping Bullfinch or two at their tables. They 
even go further than this, and take these neat 
little birds to the theatre or the opera (paying 
of course for their tickets), and invite them down 
to week-ends in the country and to shooting- 
parties. Thus their houses are gay with pleasant 
conversation, and the Piping Bullfinches have 
better balances at their banks. 

Leonard Bashton is among the most amiable 

200 



'SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

and successful of these birds. He lives in two 
pleasant little rooms in a discreet and quiet house 
that lies between Mount Street and Oxford Street, 
for which he pays an extremely moderate rent. 
Exteriorly the street has little to recommend it, 
for it is narrow and shabby, and at the back. 
Number 5, where his rooms are situated on the 
first floor, looks out on to mews. These, a few 
years ago, would not have been agreeable neigh- 
bours just outside a bedroom window, but 
Leonard had the sense to see that with the incom- 
ing of motors there would be fewer horses, so 
that before long the disadvantage of having 
mews so close to the head of his bed would be 
sensibly diminished. Thus, being a young man of 
very acute instincts, he procured a yearly lease 
of these apartments, with option on his side to 
renew, at a very small rental. In this he has 
reaped a perfectly honest reward for his fore- 
sightedness, since horses nowadays are practically 
extinct animals in these mews, and similar sets of 
rooms on each side of him are let for twice the 
sum that he pays for his. 

He has no profession whatever except that of 
a piping bullfinch, for on attaining the age of 
twenty-one he came into a property of £400 a 
year, and for the next three years lived with his 
201 



'SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

widowed mother in a country town, declining 
politely but quite firmly (and he is not without 
considerable force of character on a small scale), 
to take up any profession whatever. He was in 
every respect (except that of not working for his 
living), an excellent son to Mrs. Bashton, but 
when his two elder brothers, one a soldier, the 
other in the Foreign Office, came to stop with 
her, he always made a point of retiring to sea- 
side lodgings for the period of their stay, since 
he objected to their attitude towards him. But 
on their departure, he always came swiftly back 
again, and continued to be a charming inmate of 
Mrs. Bashton's house, entertaining her rather dull 
friends for her with excellent good humour, play- 
ing bridge at the county club between tea and 
dinner, and if the weather was fine and warm, 
indulging in a round of golf, usually on the ladies' 
links, in the afternoon. But all this time he was 
aware that he was in the chrysahs stage, so to 
speak, and with a view to becoming a butterfly 
before very long, made a habit (his only indul- 
gence), of reading a large quantity of those 
periodicals known as Society papers, which chron- 
icle the movements and marriages of the great 
world. Without knowing any of these stars by 
sight, except when he had the opportunity of 

202 



<SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

seeing their pictures in the papers, he thus 
amassed a great quantity of Information about 
their more trivial doings, and advanced his edu- 
cation. In the same way his assiduity for an 
hour or two every day at the bridge-tables in the 
club, enabled him to play a very decent game. 
He never lost his temper at cards (or indeed at 
anything else), nor wrangled with his partner, 
nor did he lose his head and make impossible 
declarations. These qualities, in this feverish, ill- 
tempered world caused him to be in general re- 
quest when a card-party was in prospect, and also 
kept him in pocket-money. He did not win much, 
but he averaged, as his note-book of winnings 
and losings told him, a steady pound a week. 
And as he did not spend much, for he had no 
expensive tastes of any sort or kind, he found 
his cigarettes and his disbursements at the golf- 
club were paid for by his gentle winnings. Sub- 
sequently, on his mother's death, he came into 
a further £200 a year, and after careful calcula- 
tion felt himself able, since now board and lodg- 
ings were no longer supplied him gratis, to move 
to London, and by whistling his tunes, and making 
his bows, manage to procure for himself a really 
nice little cage with gilded wires, and plenty of 
food. 
203 



*SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

He soon anchored himself in the ' ampler 
ether ' of town. He did not take any steps to 
cultivate his brother in the Foreign Office or his 
brother's friends, but at once began to establish 
a position with such friends of his mother who 
had town-houses. He was not in any hurry to 
do this, and after he had been asked to tea twice, 
but never to any more substantial entertainment 
by one of these, he refused his third similar in- 
vitation, since perpetually going to tea was not 
a sufficiently substantial reward for his bowings 
and pipings. On the fourth occasion he was 
asked to lunch, and being put next a most dis- 
agreeable cousin of his hostess's who had come 
up to town for the day in order to alter her will, 
he made himself so perfectly charming to her 
that his hostess, in a spasm of gratitude, asked 
him to go to the opera with her the week after. 
This he very kindly consented to do, and having 
good eyes and an excellent memory was able to 
point out to her from the box several of the 
mighty ones of the earth, whose portraits he had 
seen in picture-papers. He did not exactly say 
he knew any of them, but went so far as hinting 
as much. ' There is old Lady Birmingham,' he 
said, remembering what he had read that morn- 
ing. ' Look, she has the big tiara on. She gave 

204 



<SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

a huge party last night with a cotillion. I sup- 
pose you were there, weren't you? No; I 
couldn't go. Such a lot on, isn't there, just 
now? * 

His hostess, Mrs. Theobald, one of those in- 
dustrious climbers who are for ever mounting 
the stairs which, like the treadmill, bring them 
no higher at all, was rather impressed by this. 
It was also gratifying to find that Leonard sup- 
posed that she had been to Lady Birmingham's 
party, which she would have given one if not 
both of her fine eyes to have been invited to. Of 
course she said that she hadn't been able to go 
either, which was perfectly true, since she hadn't 
been asked, and enquired who the woman with 
the amazing emeralds was. There again Leonard 
was lucky, for in the same paper he had read 
that Mrs. Cyrus M. Plush had been at Lady 
Birmingham's party, wearing her prodigious 
emeralds, five rows of them and a girdle. It was 
exceedingly unlikely that anybody else had five 
rows and a girdle, as this new-comer into the box 
opposite certainly had, and he replied with great 
glibness : 

* Oh, Mrs. Cyrus Plush. Just look at her 
emeralds. How convenient if you were drinking 
creme de menthe and spilt it. People would only 
205 



<SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

think that it was another emerald. I don't think 
she's really very good-looking, do you?' 

Everybody has probably experienced the horror 
of getting one drop of honey or some other 
viscous fluid on to the inside of his cuff. Though 
there is only just one drop of it, its presence 
spreads until the whole arm seems to be sticky 
with it. In such quiet mysterious sort Leonard 
began to spread. Mrs. Theobald, the desire of 
whose life was to entertain largely, asked him 
regularly and constantly to her dinner-parties, and 
her guests extended their invitations to him. 
He took this set of rooms, of which mention has 
been made, and with considerable foresight did 
them up in the violent colours which were only 
just beginning to come into fashion. It was no 
part of his plan to indulge his new friends with 
expensive entertainments, but just now, straw- 
berries being so cheap, he found it an excellent 
investment to ask two or three ladies to tea, and 
found that four invitations to tea usually brought 
him in three invitations to dinner, which was a 
good dividend. To employ a smart tailor was 
another necessary outlay, and he affected socks 
of the same colour as his brilliant tie, and carried 
a malacca cane with a top of cloudy amber. But 
soon, always quick to perceive the things that 

206 



'SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

really interested him, he saw that though he was 
getting on quite nicely with women, their husbands 
and brothers did not seem to think much of him, 
and he abandoned the malacca cane, and took up 
golf again. Before long he hit a very happy kind 
of mean, and made himself the sort of young 
man who is not out of place either in town or 
in the country. He had several invitations to 
country-houses during the months of August and 
September, and when he came back to settle in 
London again in October, he got elected to a club 
of decent standing, and may be considered 
launched. His keel no longer grated, so to speak, 
on the sand: he was afloat in a shallow sea of 
acquaintances, with no sort or kind of friend 
among them. 

Leonard was in no way a snob, and did not, 
having been launched, want to voyage the deep 
seas. He had not the smallest regard for a Mar- 
chioness as such, and his regard was entirely 
limited to those who would make him comfortable. 
Naturally, if a Marchioness asked him to tea, 
he went, but he did not go on drinking tea with 
a Marchioness if that was to be the limit of her 
hospitalities. All his respect for money, similarly, 
was founded on the basis of what other people's 
money would procure for him, and while he would 
207 



•SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

take a great deal of trouble to secure a footing 
in a comfortable house, he would not raise a little 
finger to be put in a poky attic in the mansion 
of a millionaire. But he remained assiduous in 
reading paragraphs about those who move in the 
world which is called smart, because he knew that 
other people liked to hear about it, and he con- 
tinued to give the impression that he himself fre- 
quented exalted circles. But since he was not 
himself employed in climbing, he did not drop 
his early friends, so long as they put plenty of 
nice things through the bars of his cage. 

He has no intention at present of marrying, 
since even to marry a rich wife would interfere 
with his career, and he is certainly incapable of 
falling in love with a poor one. Indeed he 
neither falls in love nor pretends to with any- 
body, not being of the type that desires amorous, 
or even philandering adventure. The motto of 
his life is ' Comfort,' and on his £600 a year, 
he finds that warm houses, good cooks, the use 
of motor-cars, all the things in fact which supply 
the wadding of life and take away its sharp cold 
angles are well within his reach. He is an ex- 
cellent handler of money, has no debts at all, and 
last season even managed to have a stall at the 
opera two nights a week. This again proved an 

208 



<SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

excellent investment, for he often gave it away 
in remunerative quarters, and when he occupied 
it himself, spent all the time between the acts in 
visiting the boxes of his friends, and pointing them 
out any celebrity who might happen to be present. 
Nowadays he knows them all by sight, and so 
has less cause to read the Society journals. The 
time that he used to give to that he now spends 
more healthily in walking swiftly for an hour every 
morning round the Serpentine, for he is beginning 
to exhibit slight signs of stoutness. But he hopes 
with this increase of exercise to keep at bay the 
threatened increase of weight. When he meets 
another piping bullfinch, he is dexterous in his cor- 
diality, and by urging him indefinitely to come to 
his ' diggings,' often secures a definite invitation. 
Leonard has now been a full-fledged piping 
bullfinch for eight years and has arrived at the 
age of thirty-four. Since he is not in the least 
ashamed of his whole life, there is probably no 
one in the world who has less to be ashamed of. 
Neither the ten commandments, nor the grand 
text in Galatians which entails twenty-nine dis- 
tinct damnations can catch him tripping. He is 
uniformly good-natured, he has never set himself 
to make his way by telling scandalous stories 
about other people, he pays his debts, he is pcr- 
209 



'SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

fectly honest, almost abstemiously sober, and the 
more closely you cross-examine him, the more 
spotlessly free from any sort of vice does he seem 
to be. Only, if you stand a little way off, so to 
speak, and take a general view of him, he is some- 
how horrible to look upon, for it would seem 
that he has no soul of any kind, either good or 
bad. And that, when all is said and done, is a 
grave defect: there is nothing there, and it is just 
that which is the matter with him. All those 
delicious dinners feed a non-existent thing; all 
those nice clothes clothe it; all his amiable con- 
versation reveals it. 

His future is depressing to contemplate, for 
already he is a man governed no longer by im- 
pulse or reason, but by habit. Habit has become 
the dominating influence in his life, and at the 
age when all men ought to be learning and possi- 
bly preaching, he is only practising his terrible 
little doctrine of the piping bullfinch. If he could 
fall in love even with a barmaid that would be 
the best that could happen to his immortal soul, 
or if, obeying impulse, he could only develop a 
craving for drink or indeed a craving for any- 
thing, there would still be some sign of vitality 
in the withered kernel of that nut of his spiritual 
self which was never cracked. It is always better 

210 



<SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

to go to the good than to go to the bad, but 
quite frankly it is better to go to the bad than 
to go nowhere at all. But, as it is, it seems as 
if only the frost and the fat were going to congeal 
more closely round his atrophied heart. He is a 
prey to that worst craving known to mankind, 
the craving for being comfortable. Any dis- 
reputable adventure might save him, for it might 
teach him that there are such things as desire 
and longing for no matter what. Surely to desire 
fire is better than merely to expect a hot-water 
bottle in your bed. 

But it is to be feared that even at this early 
age of thirty-four he is a hopeless case. His 
engagement book is filled to repletion, and he 
lunches and dines every day with pleasant ac- 
quaintances, and during the slack months of 
London stays with them in their pleasant houses. 
He makes 'rounds' of visits; all August and 
September, all January and all April he is in the 
country, quartered on people whom he does not 
care about, and who do not care about him. But 
he is always so pleasant; he always knows 
everybody, and when the men come out of the 
dining-room in the evening he always sinks into 
a chair beside a rather unattractive female, and 
converses quite amusingly to her till he is sum- 

211 



'SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

moned to the bridge table. Then he always says 
he is being ' torn away,' and promises to tell her 
the rest of it to-morrow morning. And the 
bereaved lady thinks what a nice man Mr. Bash- 
ton is. And so he is. 

But as years go on he will get a little lazier 
and a little stouter. Gradually he will be rele- 
gated to the second line, and the young piping 
bullfinches who succeed him will in the chirpiness 
of their early songs wonder why that * old buffer ' 
still assumes the airs of youth. He will still ap- 
pear in the smoking-room with the stories that 
were once of contemporaneous happenings, and 
now seem to the young birds tales of ancient 
history. By degrees his country visits will 
dwindle, for country-houses are so draughty, and 
he will sit and snooze in his club, presenting the 
back of an odious bald head to the passer-by in 
St. James's Street, as he waits for the familiar 
crowd to return to London again after the Christ- 
mas holidays. His contemporaries will have tall 
sons and daughters growing up round them, and 
he will be familiarly known as Uncle Leonard, 
and yet all the time he will think he is something 
of a gay young spark yet, and point out Lady 
Birmingham's daughter and Mrs. Cyrus Plush's 
son to his neighbour at the opera. 

212 



'SING FOR YOUR DINNER' 

Then some day, if fate is kind, he will have a 
fit and die without more ado. Not a single per- 
son in the world will really miss him, for the very 
simple reason that there was nobody really there. 
He will have touched no heart, he will have 
nothing and have produced nothing but the little 
songs and bows that young bullfinches perform 
with so much more verve. Somebody at the club 
when he no longer takes a sheaf of newspapers 
under his arm will say, * Poor old Bashton: nice 
old chap! Getting awfully doddery, wasn't he? 
Are you going to see the new play to-night? 
Haymarket, isn't it?' 



I 



I 



t 



THE PRAISERS OF 

PAST TIME 
CHAPTER TWELVE 



CHAPTER TWELVE 

THE PRAISERS OF 

PAST TIME 

EVER SINCE SOCIETY (WITH A LARGE 

S) has been the subject of Gleanings and 
Memoirs and Memories and Recollections, the 
distinguished authors of these chatty little vol- 
umes have been practically unanimous In saying 
that in their day things were very different, and 
such goings-on would not ever have been allowed 
then. (They would express It In a statelier 
manner, but that is the meaning they seek to 
convey.) Incidentally, then, If we may take it 
that these strictures accurately represent facts, 
we may gather that most of those writers must be 
listened to with the deference due to the elderly 
(since otherwise they would not be able to remem- 
ber such a very different state of things), and 
that they are none of them much pleased with 
the way In which People (with a big P) behave 
now. This appears to be a constant phenomenon, 
for If we delve Into social history of any epoch 
we find just the same complaints about the con- 
temporary world, and we are forced to conclude 
that, to state the case broadly, uncles and aunts 
and grandfathers and grandmothers never ap- 
prove of the behaviour of their nephews, nieces, 
217 



THE PRAISERS OF 

and grandchildren. At least those who write 
about them do not, as they take the gloomiest 
view of them, and are unanimous in declaring 
that the country is going or has gone to the dogs. 
Now there is a great deal of indulgence to be 
granted to these loquacious pessimists, who are 
full of a faded sort of spice and are seldom dull. 
Indeed, they should be more indulgent to them- 
selves, and oftener remember that it is but rea- 
sonable that they should have lost the elasticity 
of youth, and the powers of enjoyment that no 
doubt were once theirs, the failure of which leads 
them to contrast so sadly (and peevishly) the 
days that are with the days that are no more. 
But they in their time caused a great deal of 
head-shaking and uplifting of horror-stricken 
hands on the part of their elders, and, remember- 
ing how little notice they ever took of those 
antique mutterings, they would be kinder to them- 
selves and to others if they put their ink-bottles 
away, and looked on at the abandoned revellers 
who take no great notice of them as comfortably 
as possible, instead of sitting up to all hours of 
the night composing liverish reflections about the 
wickedness of the young men and women of the 
day. It is a waste of good vitriol to throw it 
about like that, and it is really wiser to wipe the 

218 



PAST TIME 

hot ink from the pen before and not after writing, 
as one of our most industrious social castigators 
did not so long ago, ' There is not an ounce of 
manliness in the country.' For contradiction of 
so Bedlamitlsh a sentiment the myriad graves in 
France and Flanders bear a testimony that is the 
more eloquent for its being unspoken. 

The truth is that every age finds a great deal 
to condemn in the manners and customs that dif- 
ferentiate the rising generation from its own. 
But that does not prove that the elders are right: 
if it proves anything it proves that they are too 
old to take in new ideas, and so had better con- 
fine their remarks to the old ones, on which they 
are possibly competent to speak. For in their 
view, if we take the collective wisdom of the 
moralists of Mayfair, the country is not now for 
the first time going to the dogs, but has always 
been going to the dogs. It has never done any- 
thing else, and yet it has not quite arrived at the 
dogs yet. But the cats appear to have got it. 

There has always been, since man became a 
gregarious animal, a vague affair called Society. 
Nobody knows precisely what it is except that 
when the gregariousness of man attained sufficient 
dimensions it happened, and the older generation 
disapproved of it. The more elderly specimens 
219 



THE PRAISERS OF 

of cave-men without a shadow of doubt deplored 
the manner in which the younger gnawed their 
mutton-bones, and regretted the days when all 
well-regulated cave-boys and cave-girls always 
wiped their greasy fingers not on their new woad 
as they now do, but on their hair. Society used 
to be society then, and only the well-mannered 
could get into it. And it is in precisely the same 
tone that the modern moralists croon or croak 
their laments beside the waters of the modern 
Babylon. The present praisers of past time be- 
wail with an acidity that betokens suppressed gout 
that their nephews and nieces have lost all de- 
cency in speech, and actually make public the fact 
that one or other of them has had appendicitis. 
And Uncle cannot bear it! Have appendicitis 
if you must, but for the sake of Society pretend 
that it was a sore throat unusually low down. 
At all costs Uncle's Victorian sensibilities must 
be spared, or he will go straight home and em- 
bark on Chapter IX. of his Recollections, called 
the ' Moral Depravity of Modern Society.' But 
is it too late for him to remember how once the 
Queen of Spain caught fire, and was badly burned 
because nobody could allude to the awful fact that 
she had 1-gs? The elderly ladies-in-waiting would 
have died rather than have done so, and there- 

220 



PAST TIME 

fore the Royal L-gs were much injured by the 
flame. But perhaps Uncle would like that. . . . 
Or again our truculent admonishers remind us 
that Society was once a very small and esoteric 
body. Nobody but the de Veres really counted, 
just as if the de Veres prehistorically came down 
from heaven with the Ark of Society in their 
possession and thereupon started it. But nobody 
really started it; the de Veres did not as a matter 
of fact say, * Let there be Society,' and there was 
Society. Once the de Veres themselves were 
parvenus: when they began to enter the charmed 
circle they too were accounted nobodies, and the 
ante-de Veres wondered who Those People were. 
It was but gradually that the mists of antiquity 
clothed their august forms, until, as from the 
cloud on Sinai, they looked down on the post-de 
Veres, and mumbled together at the degeneration- 
of that which had once been so select and is now 
so Verabund. 

The great central Aunt Sally at which the 
memorio-maniacs hurl their darts most viciously 
is a thing they call Smart Society, or the Smart 
Set. For generations they have done so, and the 
poor Aunt Sally ought to have been battered 
to bits long ago, for they throw their missiles 
straight at her face from point-blank range. Only, 

221 



THE PRAISERS OF 

by some process not rightly understood by her 
assailants, she appears perfectly impervious to 
their attack and proceeds on her godless way as 
brightly as ever. She is also, as we shall see, 
largely an invention of those who so strenuously 
denounce her. What started the loquacious pes- 
simist perhaps was that he found there were a 
good many nephews and nieces who enjoyed them- 
selves very tolerably, and began to find him and 
his tedious stories about what the best people did 
in the age of Henry II. or Charles I. or William 
IV. (according to the epoch which he remembers 
best) rather tiresome, and did not listen to him 
with due attention. That may or may not have 
set him going, but the fact that there exists in 
London a quantity of rich people who like to 
entertain their friends (among whom the lo- 
quacious pessimist would scorn to number him- 
self) fills him with ungovernable fury, and with 
a pen that blisters the paper, he describes how 
they spend their Sunday. 

Breakfast, if we may believe him, goes on from 
ten till twelve, lunch (a substantial dinner) is 
prolonged with liqueurs and cigars till close on 
tea-time, when sandwiches and even ' bleeding 
woodcocks ' are provided. Dinner is not till nine, 
and so late an hour finds everybody hungry again. 

222 



PAST TIME 

Then, forgetting that he has told us that eating 
goes on the whole day, he informs us in another 
attack on poor Aunt Sally that these same people 
spend Sunday in riding and driving and going out 
to tea ten miles away, and careering about on 
a * troop ' of bicycles. Yet again, forgetting that 
here his text is the sinful extravagance of the 
present day, he informs us how stately were the 
good old times, when a rich man kept as many 
servants as he could afford and ' sailed along ' 
in a coach and four, instead of going (as he does 
in these shambling, undignified days) in the two- 
penny tube. . . . After all, the economy effected 
by using the twopenny tube instead of the coach 
and four would enable you to buy an occasional 
* bleeding woodcock ' for your friends, and yet 
not be so extravagant as your good, stately, sim- 
ple old grandfather. Or, when they speak of 
modern shooting-parties these chroniclers allude 
to the mounds of * crushed pheasants ' that are 
subsequently sent to be sold at the poulterer's, 
and speak of the hand-reared birds that almost 
perch on the barrels of their murderers. It would 
be interesting to place one of these moralists at 
a modern pheasant-shoot, when the birds rocket 
above the tree-tops, and see how large a mound 
of crushed pheasants he mowed down, and how 
223 



THE PRAISERS OF 

many hand-reared birds came and sat on his gun 
before he slaughtered them. Such descriptions 
as these are rank nonsense, the work of out- 
siders who, while betraying a desolate ignorance 
of what they are talking about, betray also, in 
ignorance, an unamiable desire to scold some- 
body. 

Now every one has his own notion of what 
Society (with a big S) is, and most people mean 
different things. Guileless snobs read the small 
paragraphs in the paper, and think they are 
learning about it. Others walk in the Park and 
are sure they see it: the suburbs think that it is 
the sort of circle in which their pet actor habitu- 
ally moves : South Kensington thinks it is in Park 
Lane, or the private view of the Academy, or 
at a garden-party. In point of fact it is, if any- 
where, everywhere, and the only thing that can 
certainly be stated about it is that those who 
think about it at all, think that it is just a little 
way ahead, and thus declare themselves to be 
snobs or ineffectual climbers. But those who 
really make Society are not those who think about 
it, but Are it, just because they live the life in 
which their birth and their circumstances have 
placed them, with simplicity of mind and enjoy- 
ment. Society does not live in a spasm of social 

224 



PAST TIME 

efforts, it lives perfectly naturally and without 
self-consciousness. It is impossible to make any- 
thing of your environment if you are always 
wishing to be somewhere else, and you will make 
nothing of any environment at all, unless you are 
at ease there. Indeed the big S of Society is 
really the invention of the snobbish folk who 
are not friends with their surroundings, and that 
in part, at any rate, is why the loquacious pessi- 
mist is so unrelenting towards it. 

Society, then, and in special Smart Society, 
as it exists in the minds of the praisers of past 
time and of snobs, is a perennial phantom, which 
is the chief reason why none of them can be 
forced or can succeed in getting into it. As they 
conceive of it, it is no more than a Will o' the 
Wisp, which, if they pursue it, merely leads them 
on through miry ways to find themselves in the 
end pursuing nothing at all, and hopelessly 
bogged in the marshes of their own imagination. 
That society exists all the world over is, luckily, 
perfectly true, but this peculiar and odious con- 
ception of it is the invention of those who want 
to get into it and of those who fulminate against 
it. Indeed it is almost allowable to wonder 
whether these two classes are not really one, for 
it is impossible to acquit some of its bitterest 
225 



THE PRAISERS OF 

enemies of a certain hint of envy in their outpour- 
ings, a grain of curiosity in their commination 
services. 

The pity of it is that they will not rest from 
these strivings, or realize that what they pursue 
(either with longings or vituperation) exists only 
in their own excited brains. Each has his feverish 
dream: one pictures a heavenly Salem of dukes 
and duchesses, another a swimming bath full of 
champagne and paved with ortolans, another an 
Elysium where infinite bridge consumes the night, 
and continual changing of your dress the day. 
These conditions have no existence; they are 
Wills o' the Wisp. There does not exist in the 
world a Smarter Set (to retain the beloved old 
snobbism) than a circle of friends who, with 
definite aims of their own, and tastes that are 
not copied from other people, enjoy themselves 
and are at ease with each other, not being snobs 
on the one hand or grousers on the other. All 
other ideas of Smart Sets, whether in London or 
Manchester or the Fiji Islands, are mere moon- 
shine: the only Smart Set that ever existed or 
ever will exist is that of uncensorious and simple 
people who have the sense to appreciate the bless- 
ings they so richly enjoy. Of these Smart Sets 
there are many, but they are not the Smart Sets 

226 



PAST TIME 

or the capital-lettered Society that are usually 
meant when allusion Is made to them. 

But somehow the notion of the existence of 
* A Smart Set ' or Society with a big S Is so deep- 
rooted that it will be well to examine the evidence 
for its existence before labelling It ' Bad Meat/ 
to be destroyed by the Board of Moral Health. 
The evidence in favour of its existence (If they 
insist on it) is derivable from three possible 
sources : 

(i.) First-hand evidence of those who have 
witnessed or partaken in these ungodly orgies. 

(ii.) Report. 

(iii.) Reporters. 

Now the purveyors of the Intelligence, those 
who distribute It, are largely the praisers of past 
tim.e, who so persistently attack it and paint such 
lurid pictures of Its Neronlsm. But they must 
have got their Information from somewhere (un- 
less we are reluctantly compelled to suppose they 
made it up) and they can have got It from no 
other sources than those specified above. 

But on their own fervent asseverations they 
have never so much as set foot in these Medmen- 
ham Abbeys, and If their Information Is derived 
directly from the Abbeys, It must have been con- 
veyed either by the revellers themselves, by their 
227 



THE PRAISERS OF 

valets and ladies' maids, or have grown out of 
the Tranby Croft trial. It is unlikely that the 
revellers should have recounted the story of their 
shame to those sleuth-hounds on the trail of 
decadence, and if we rule out the Tranby Croft 
trial as not covering all that the sleuth-hounds 
say about Smart Life, we must conclude that they 
must have induced (no doubt with suitable re- 
muneration) the gentleman's gentleman and the 
lady's lady to say what their owners did and 
when they went to bed. But not for a moment 
can we believe that these distinguished scribes re- 
sorted to such a trick. The statement of the 
proposition shows how incredible it is, for these 
high-minded moralists simply could not have ap- 
plied for the knowledge of * sich goings on ' from 
chattering servants. 

First-hand evidence, then, being ruled out, the 
purveyors may have derived their information 
from report. Here the baffled aspirants to the 
social distinction of being Smart may have helped 
them. But still such knowledge if worth any- 
thing must be based on something, and if on 
report it is merely the more valueless for having 
gone through so many mouths. 

We are left then with the question of evidence 
derived from reporters, and here I think we 

228 



PAST TIME 

touch the source of the appalling state of things 
pictured by the loquacious pessimist. The de- 
lightful anonymous author of the Londoner's 
Log-book, has grouped the organs of those who 
chronicle social happenings under the title of 
Classy Cuttings, and it is from these columns 
that we must conclude that the praisers of past 
time derive their awful information. It is they 
who give to the thirsty public the details of the 
menu of the supper that followed the dance, and 
hint how great were the losings of a certain 
Countess who lives not a hundred miles from 
B-lgr-v-Sq-r-, when she played poker at St-l-n-. 
But, does that sort of information carry the re- 
quired conviction? Indeed it only carries con- 
viction of the lamb-like credulity of the person 
who believes it. Once upon a time an eminent 
and excellent lady revealed to a horrified audience 
that the Smart Set habitually drank what she 
called 'White Cup' at tea (sensation). It 
sounded thoroughly Neronian, but lost Its Im- 
presslveness when the further revelation was 
made that at a tennis-party certain Individuals 
had been so lost to all sense of decency as to 
partake of hock and soda instead of tea and 
cream. 

It is on such foundations, columned by Classy 
229 



THE PRAISERS OF 

Cuttings, that the praisers of past time build the 
Old Bailey, where, bewigged and berobed, they so 
solemnly pronounce the extreme sentence on 
Smart Sets and Society. We must not deny to 
their summing-up something of the gorgeously 
Oriental vocabulary of Oulda, though we cannot 
allow them much share in her wit. She told in 
the guise of fiction the sort of thing which the 
praisers of past time — after consulting Classy 
Cuttings — expect us to accept as facts; she and 
Classy Cuttings mixed the effervescent beverage 
which they allow to get flat, and then label it the 
beef-tea of Fact. And when we are offered these 
fantastic imaginings and are assured that the lurid 
pictures are positively photographic in their ac- 
curacy, all our pleasure, as readers, Is gone, and 
we expire with a few hollow yawns. We had 
hoped it was Ouida, but to our unspeakable dis- 
may we are told that it Is all Too True. Not 
being able to swallow that, we can but remember 
the story of Dr. Johnson and the hot potato. 

Tempora mutantur^ and unless we change with 
them we shall never grasp the true values of the 
marching years. Society (with a final curse on 
the large S) changes, and the changes represent 
on the whole the opinion of people who are on 
the right lines. The praisers of past time have 

230 



PAST TIME 

cried ' Wolf ' too often with regard to the deca- 
dence they invariably detect in the present time, 
and until we are more certain that at last the 
wolf is really there, it is wiser to push along, than 
to trust In the denunciations of those who, firmly 
immured in the sedan-chairs of sixty years ago, 
squint through the chinks of their lowered blinds 
(lowered, lest they behold vanity) at the crowd 
they do not know, and the bustle that they alto- 
gether fail to understand. In their day they 
kicked up their heels much higher than their 
grandmammas approved. They disregarded the 
denunciations of their elders then, and they must 
not be surprised if the younger generation, whose 
antics their creaking joints and croaking minds are 
unable to imitate, think of them as antique and 
peevish progenitors now. The arts of fifty years 
ago are doubtless theirs, all except the art of 
gracefully retiring. Instead, the more accom- 
plished of them, since their loquacity no longer 
can hold an audience, proceed to volumes of un- 
comprehending memoirs. As long as they stick 
to the past, their recollections often possess an 
old-world fragrance as of lavender-bags shut In 
disused Victorian wardrobes, but when they come 
to the present the lavender-scent fades, and they 
reek of brimstone and burning. A grandmamma, 
231 



THE PRAISERS OF 

talking of past days, is a delightful and adorable 
member of any circle, but when she laments the 
dangerous speed at which trains go nowadays, 
every one younger than she feels she does not 
quite understand. And if, getting her informa- 
tion from fiction (as the praisers of past days do 
from the columns of Classy Cuttings), she tells 
us that motors habitually run over a hundred 
thousand people a day in the streets of London, 
the younger folk, with the kindness characteristic 
of youth, merely shout in her ear-trumpet, ' Yes, 
Grandma, isn't it awful? ' and wonder when her 
maid will fetch her to go to bed. 

It is on Grandma's data that the praisers of 
past time form their notions of society. She 
prides herself on never having been in one of 
those horrible automobiles: the praisers pride 
themselves on never having set foot within the 
doors of these unspeakable temples. Apparently 
it is for this reason that they can tell us with pre- 
cision what happens there, except when they 
forget what they have previously written, and 
flatly contradict themselves. Like the Fat Boy, 
the loquacious pessimist wants to make our flesh 
creep, and sepulchrally announces that he saw 
Miss Wardle and Mr. Tupman ' a-kissing and 
a-hugging.' But unlike the Fat Boy, who really 

232 



PAST TIME 

saw it, the pessimist has only ' heard tell of it ' 
in Classy Cuttings, and with Wardle we should 
exclaim, ' Pooh, he must have been dreaming.' 
So he was, all alone one night when nobody had 
asked him out to dinner, and falling into a reverie 
proceeded to contrast the Sancta Simplicitas of 
the days when everybody sailed along in a coach 
and four with those extravagant times when he 
has to pay for his own mutton-chop, and rich 
folk save their money to go in the twopenny tube. 
This sounded a little illogical, but it would do, 
and refreshing himself with another drink of 
Classy Cuttings, he lashed out at the poker-party 
at St-l-n-, by way of punishing those who were 
not his hosts on that terrible occasion. Of course 
he would not have gone in any case, since he has 
never and will never set foot in those restaurants 
(not homes) of vice and extravagance. One 
cannot help wondering whether, if he conde- 
scended to go there, he would not feel a little 
kinder after ortolans and a bleeding woodcock 
for tea, and with greater indulgence to the de- 
generation he deplores, write a few pages about 
Progress instead of Decadence. But who knows? 
The ortolans might disagree with him, and he 
would become unkinder than ever. 

Possibly all is for the best. 

233 



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